Skulduggery 8: Building a Criminal Empire

by Logan Jacobs

  “They don’t call us the pleasure capital of the empire for nothing,” Flavius said with a shrug.

  “That just means more business for us,” I said. “But that means you have a lot of work to do over the next few days.”

  “So I start spreading the word about how good the whiskey is, plus the fact that I own the operation, right?” the day elf asked. “And I also talk to the people in charge of the food and drink for the race, and I tell them I can send along my workers to set them up with some of this whiskey?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “And if everything goes well with the boat race, then you’ll get your first month’s payment right after that.”

  “Okay,” Flavius said. “But what if-- I mean, what if I talk to the caterers for the race, and they’re not interested in any whiskey?”

  “Oh, I have a feeling they’ll be very interested,” I said with a grin, “and that’s one of those details that you really don’t need to be too concerned with.”

  After all, Flavius didn’t need to know about my little arrangement with the Thief’s Guild in the Gold City, and he certainly didn’t need to know that I had arranged for the theft of the temple wine. But right about now, the caterers for the Golden Lake Race would be starting to feel desperate. If they didn’t get any alcohol for the boat race, they’d lose out on a fuck-ton of money, plus they would have a whole crowd of angry partiers on their hands.

  “Alright, as long as you’re sure,” the day elf said.

  “I am,” I said. “Let me know if there are any issues before the boat race, but otherwise, we’ll see you after the race with your first month’s payment.”

  “It’s been a pleasure,” the day elf said with a smile. “I look forward to our next encounter, Wade and… Pixie, no-- um, Prissy? Minnie?”

  “Penny,” the redhead growled through clenched teeth.

  “Right, Penny,” Lord Flavius said with a nod. “Until next time.”

  After I gave him the address of our lodgings, so he could send word to us if he had any questions, we shook hands again and went our separate ways. Of course, Penny and I only made it a few paces away from the fountain, and as soon as we were able to, we ducked behind a large cactus and waited until the elven lord disappeared from view.

  “It’s okay that he knows our address, right?” Penny asked, while we waited for Ava and Dar to join us.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “We’ve made sure that the apartment is secure, and it’s the one sure place that he can contact us whenever he needs to. Besides, it’s much better for him to know our home address than our warehouse address.”

  “Then let’s just hope that if he needs it, he’ll remember it better than my name,” the pixie thief grumbled.

  “Fair enough, Minnie,” I joked.

  Penny gave me a playful shove, but Dar joined us and Ava made her way down from the tree before I could tease her any more about it.

  “So far, so good,” Dar said.

  “It would seem so,” I said. “Why don’t we go back to the apartment and make sure that all our security measures are still in place? You know, just in case.”

  “It can never hurt to be too careful,” Ava agreed.

  After we left the Hanging Gardens, I was feeling good about our progress in the Gold City, but I was still aware that we weren’t completely in the clear yet. We were just about to sell our whiskey at one of the biggest events in the city, and once we achieved success there, it would be a pretty straight shot to the top of this city.

  But the race was two days away, and if there was one thing that I had learned from the whiskey business and from life in the elven empire, a lot could happen in two days.

  When we were just over halfway back to our apartment, Penny took the lead and walked a few steps ahead of the rest of us, so she was the first person to turn around the next street corner. The moment she turned onto it, she stopped mid-stride and for just a second, she seemed completely frozen.

  Then, she moved.

  “Fuck, get down!” Penny shouted as she twisted around, jumped toward Ava, and pushed the blonde assassin out of the way.

  Chapter 14

  Only half a second after Penny pushed Ava aside, a dagger sped past the place where they had both been, followed by three more that forced us all to drop to our knees to avoid them.

  As soon as the daggers clattered to the pavement behind us, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that we were alone, concentrated on the Opalstone amulet, and then imagined the whole street frozen in place. When I looked back up, all three of my friends were motionless, and I saw a fifth dagger suspended mid-air only a few paces away from the redheaded pixie.

  “Well, this has to be assassins,” I muttered as I pushed myself to my feet.

  I knew damn well that I hadn’t pissed off any members of the Assassin’s Guild in the Gold City, or at least, not that anyone knew about. There was no way that anyone had connected the dead assassin in Tevian’s tree back to us-- but then why the fuck were we being attacked in the middle of the day, right here in the middle of the street?

  At least no one else was around at the moment, but I knew that I needed to act fast if I was going to keep it that way. I hurried forward, plucked the frozen dagger out of the air, and then let my gaze trace back to where the blade must have come from.

  There was a faint smudge of black on top of the building at this street corner, and when I kept looking at the rest of the rooftops around us, I saw that there were two more smudges on the next roof over. That was three assassins so far, but since I didn’t want to miss any, I moved fully around the corner and saw that there were three more assassins scattered down the next road. Two of them were half-hidden behind lamp posts, and the third had just started to come out of a side alley to join the others.

  “I must have pissed off somebody,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

  Six assassins seemed a little excessive, but then again, that depended entirely on who had hired them. And that was something I fully intended to find out from one of them-- just as soon as we took care of the rest of the bunch.

  The Opalstone amulet was still warm against my chest, so I knew I had a little more time before the effects of my magic wore off. I slipped back around the corner, took my war hammer out of its sling across my back, and looked at my friends.

  “Ava!” I said. “Penny! Dar!”

  Immediately, all three of my friends blinked awake at just the sound of my voice, and as soon as they saw me, they all pulled out their weapons and moved toward me.

  “Assassins,” I said. “Ava, you take the three on the roof over there. We’ll handle the three on the ground-- see them?”

  As soon as we turned around the corner and spotted the frozen assassins, I felt the amulet grow cold against my chest again, just as my friends nodded and readied their weapons.

  “Now!” I shouted.

  Ava was the first to strike, and two arrows fired from her sleek recurve bow before I even blinked. They hit each of their targets up on the roof, so two assassins stumbled over the edge of the building and plummeted to the street below. But even though she notched another arrow right away, the third assassin had just enough time to duck out of view before she could strike him.

  “I’ve got him,” Ava growled, and then she climbed up a lamp post and vaulted inside an open window in the building right beside us.

  While she stalked her third target, I turned all my attention to the three assassins that were already on the street with us. Dar and Penny had cornered one assassin up against the wall, so that left two for me to face. But even as I swung my war hammer toward one of them, I realized that the third assassin must have snuck back into the side alley.

  I would just have to deal with him in a minute.

  My hammer collided into the forearm of the assassin right in front of me, but he dodged before I could complete the blow and drive my weapon into his ribs. He was a halfling, but his small size just made him quicker, so he ducked, rolled right past m
e, and then jumped back up to his feet, just as I spun around to face him.

  He held a long dagger high in the air, and as soon as I turned around, he plunged it toward my exposed left side. I saw the blade coming, so I took half a step back and twisted the handle of my hammer around. The metal blocked the dagger, but the assassin had put so much force into it that the blow of metal on metal sent vibrations up into his arm that made his hand shake like a leaf.

  I took advantage of his momentary weakness. While he tried to pull his shaking arm back toward himself, so he could strike again, I swung the spiked side of my hammer head up toward the halfling assassin’s shoulder. The spike rammed into his arm just below his armpit, and it was powerful enough to make the halfling drop his blade.

  Immediately, I kicked the assassin’s dagger further out into the street, and I shifted my grip on the hammer’s handle, so I could swing in for a second blow with the dull side of the weapon. I knew that the spike and the dull side of the hammer were hefty enough to do some serious damage, so it didn’t really matter which one I chose to use.

  But since this was our first real fight ith our new weapons, I figured that I might as well really test it out.

  I swung in for a second blow from the halfling’s right side, and the flat side of the war hammer cracked into the assassin’s temple. It spun him around in a little circle, and while he tried to regain his balance, I pulled back for another blow.

  This time, I smacked the dull side of the hammer into my opponent’s skull just above his ear, and part of the tough halfling’s skull bone caved in with a sickening squelch. His eyes went crossed inside his skull, and as he tottered backward, the hood fell away from his face and showed the rush of blood that had begun to pour out over the assassin’s ear.

  It gave me just enough time to glance over his shoulder and check on Dar and Penny, but it looked like they had just brought their target to the ground. And since throwing daggers continued to shoot over the tops of our heads, I guessed that Ava still needed just the right moment to take down her own target.

  Of course, it was also completely possible that Ava had managed to sneak her way across the street, up the stairs in the opposite building, and then across its roof, and she might just be about to slit the assassin’s throat. That was just as likely as the possibility that she would bring him down with an arrow.

  That was one of the great things about Ava as an assassin-- whatever she did, it was always something of a surprise.

  As the halfling assassin continued to stumble in front of me, I raised my hammer again and crashed it down on the top of his head. His skull was already fractured at the temple, so my weapon sank into his flesh more easily now, and after two more blows to the top of his head, the halfling’s skull caved in on itself.

  The assassin dropped to the ground at my feet, while his blood and brains leaked out of his fractured skull. More blood dripped from the end of my hammer, until the stones looked like they had been stained with wine, and as I watched, the halfling’s blood oozed across the street to join the blood of the assassin that Dar and Penny had just killed.

  “Did you see the third one?” I demanded, even as the three of us caught our breaths.

  “I think he ran away,” Penny gasped, but she shook her head and pointed to the side alley just ahead.

  “He must have gotten scared,” I said with a nod.

  “Then we should go back and help Ava,” Dar called. “I guess we won’t get that last one.”

  The assassin must have hidden himself in the side alley once he saw how the fight was going, and he probably hoped we would wander past him, so he could strike at us from his hiding spot. Of course, that would only have worked if Penny hadn’t seen where his hiding spot was, so now, we just had to hope that he believed us when we said that we were headed back the other direction.

  Because as much as he might want to take us by surprise, I planned to spring a little surprise on him first.

  A single black arrow flew overhead, just as Dar, Penny, and I moved forward like one unit to take down the last assassin on the ground. Just before I turned around the corner into the side alley, I adjusted my grip on the war hammer so the spike would drive into my target first, and Dar and Penny raised their daggers with a look of grim determination.

  When I stepped into the alley, I didn’t even wait long enough to get eyes on my opponent. Instead, I just swung my weapon forward at the exact same time that I stepped around the corner, and immediately, the spike collided with something soft.

  I pulled the hammer back as I saw the dwarven assassin right in front of me, but from the way that he clutched his stomach, I knew that I had gotten in a solid hit. But even though the dwarf groaned in pain, he immediately reached into his cloak, grabbed a blade curved into the shape of a circle, and flung it straight at my throat.

  Penny lunged toward me with her serrated dagger stretched out in front of her. Immediately, the teeth on her blade caught the disc-shaped weapon by the middle, and she slung it straight back at the dwarven assassin who had thrown it.

  He ducked out of the way, so it clattered to the pavement behind him, but by then, Dar had circled around behind him, so there was no way for him to escape now. The dwarf glanced over his shoulder at Dar, looked back at Penny and me, and then looked up at the sides of the windowless alley that he had trapped himself in.

  “Don’t kill him,” I warned. “We need one of them alive, and I’m pretty sure Ava just killed the only other one still left.”

  Dar danced forward and tugged back on the assassin’s cloak, but before he could flip the fabric over the dwarf’s head and make him blind for a second, the assassin elbowed him in the face. As my halfling friend rocked backward with a bloody nose, the dwarven assassin reached toward his belt again for another weapon.

  I was ready for him this time. Before the dwarf’s fingers could even wrap around the dagger on his belt, I launched my heavy hammer toward his stomach again, and when my weapon slammed into his belly, I heard a crack and then a hiss, as all the air went out of the assassin’s lungs.

  The dwarf’s eyes bulged as he tried to suck in a desperate gulp of air, but I brought my hammer up into his stomach one more time, just to make sure that he didn’t have any time to recover and try to sneak in another blow against us.

  The moment the hammer struck its target, the dwarf doubled over, and then Penny dashed forward to slam the hilt of her dagger down on the back of the assassin’s neck. She jumped back just before the dwarf crumpled completely, and the top of his head smacked into the stones just beside her feet.

  “Oops, I hope that didn’t kill him,” Penny said as she glanced back at me.

  “Nah, he’ll be alright,” I said. “It would take more than one blow to crack through the thick skull of a dwarf.”

  “Fair enough,” the pixie thief laughed. “I’ll be sure to tell Skam that the next time we see him.”

  “I think he might actually take that as a compliment,” Ava said as she strolled down the alley toward us. “Dar, are you okay?”

  “Mhm.” The halfling gave us a thumbs up with one hand, while his other hand still clutched at his bloody nose.

  “I assume you must have gotten your last mark?” I asked as I bent down beside the unconscious dwarf.

  “Of course,” Ava said with a smile. “I even managed to retrieve my arrows.”

  I pushed the dwarven assassin over onto his back, and as soon as I got a whiff of his overpowering breath, I knew that we hadn’t killed him. I rocked back on my heels and looked back up at my friends.

  “So what’d you do with the bodies?” I asked Ava.

  “I just left them,” the blonde assassin said with a shrug. “Whenever someone finds them, they’ll just figure that they failed in their mission. It won’t connect back to us, especially since the street is still empty.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing we took this route,” Penny said. “So why are we keeping this fucker alive?”

  “Oh
, it’s not for long,” I replied. “I just want to know who we pissed off. After all, nobody hires half a dozen assassins if they don’t have a reason.”

  “Well, you’d certainly like to think so, wouldn’t you?” Dar groaned as he finally dropped his hand from his face. “I’d hate to think that someone hired them just because they didn’t like our faces.”

  The halfling’s nose wasn’t bent out of shape, so it didn’t seem like it was actually broken, but it was slightly purple around the edges, and so much blood had streamed out of his nostrils that now there was a dark red crust from the bottom of his nose all the way around his lips and down his chin.

  “I like the new war paint,” I snickered.

  “Yeah, yeah, very funny,” my halfling friend said as he rolled his eyes and then winced. “Fuck, it even hurts to roll my eyes.”

  “I think you might live,” Penny said.

  “And that’s more than you can say for our dwarven friend here,” I said. “Dar, do you think you could go to the end of the alley and keep watch? Just let us know if anyone starts to head this direction.”

  “Will do, boss,” Dar said and then marched toward the end of the narrow alley.

  Since the small street was a dead-end with no windows on either side, I didn’t have to worry about being caught by anyone from any other direction, and that meant we could conduct our interrogation in peace.

  “Let’s sit him up against the wall,” I said.

  After the three of us propped up the dwarven assassin, I had us surround him in a half-circle and then let Ava disarm him of all his weapons. Once he was weaponless, I slapped him across the face a few times to try to bring him back to consciousness, but Penny had knocked him out so well that it took five slaps before he started to stir again.

  “Ungh,” the dwarf groaned and finally cracked his eyes open.

  “You’re surrounded, and you’re unarmed,” I said, “so if I were you, I wouldn’t do anything stupid.”

  “Ya mean like kill one of the city’s assassins in cold blood?” the dwarf growled. “You’ve disarmed me, so ya can’t just kill me. That’d be murder, not self-defense.”