Skulduggery 8: Building a Criminal Empire

by Logan Jacobs

  Dar and Ava both started to take a step forward, but I held up my hand for them to keep their positions. I didn’t know exactly how Tevian was about to react, but since I was the only one who could block the night elf’s magic, I wanted to keep myself between him and my friends for as long as possible.

  I hadn’t really intended to attack him, especially not with his own magic, but then again, it wasn’t like Tevian had left me with much of a choice. First of all, the bastard had hired assassins to try to kill us, and now, he had actually tried to kill us himself in broad daylight and for absolutely no reason other than the fact that he couldn’t fucking stand me.

  I leaned forward and peered down into the booth, but the elven trader was already lifeless. He was sprawled out on his back, and there was a giant smoking crater where his abdomen had been just a few seconds earlier. Beside the trader, Tevian crouched on his hands and feet, and he stared at the other elf’s body, like he couldn’t quite believe what he had just witnessed.

  “You doing okay down there?” I asked. “You need a hand or anything?”

  My voice was enough to stir Tevian out of his shock, and the night elf immediately jumped to his feet and started to raise his hands again.

  “You sure you don’t want to rethink that one?” I growled. “I’m happy to play this particular song and dance with you all day, but I don’t think you want to keep dodging your own magic, do you?”

  “You’re a fucking dead man,” Tevian said as he dropped his hands back to his sides. “I don’t know how you did that, just like I don’t know how the fuck you’re even here, but-- by the Ancients, you’re just a goddamn human!”

  “And fucking proud of it, too,” I snarled.

  “Just wait until I tell the authorities,” Tevian said. “When they find out that there’s a human in town who can use magic, they’ll--”

  “And who’s going to believe you?” I laughed. “The elves don’t even think humans are capable of wiping their own asses, much less practicing magic.”

  “Then maybe I’ll just have your little friends here arrested,” Tevian said, “and we’ll see if their execution doesn’t serve as a good motivation for you to turn yourself in.”

  “That would mean you’d have to catch us first,” Penny said, “so good fucking luck with that.”

  “Nobody asked you, you little--”

  “Now wait just a minute, Tevian,” I interrupted him. “Aren’t you supposed to be the big, bad authority in town? Unless, of course… oh, I see.”

  “You see what?” the night elf demanded.

  “You don’t actually have any power here,” I said. “Oh, sure, the Gold City just threw a big party for you and everything, but that doesn’t mean shit.”

  “It just means people here like any excuse to have a good time,” Dar added.

  “Exactly,” I said, “and I’m afraid both you and I know the real truth of the matter, Tevian. You only came here and took this city’s shitty job offer because you had to.”

  “It was not a shitty job offer!” Tevian said as blue fire sparked between his fingers.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said with a smirk. “Did you actually want to herd all the wild orcs up like a farmer herds his fucking cows? I didn’t realize that was such a glorious job for an elven general.”

  “It’s an honor to keep my empire safe from all threats of harm,” Tevian said with his nose up in the air.

  “Who do you think you’re fooling?” I laughed as I glanced up and down the street to make sure we were still alone. “It’s just us, Tevian. There’s no one else here to impress.”

  “I’m not trying to--”

  “You only came here and took this job because you got demoted in your own hometown,” I cut him off. “Because they forced you out, remember? Or maybe you forgot how you had to leave our city in total humiliation, with your tail tucked between your legs and your--”

  “Enough!” Tevian said as more blue fire sparked in between his fingers.

  But he didn’t try to throw any more of his magic at me this time, and I knew that had to mean that he was scared. After all, what could be scarier than a human with magic? Elves were the only race that were allowed to use magic, and they were certainly the only race that was even supposed to be able to.

  Until I came along.

  “Oh, so you do remember?” I smirked. “I guess that also means you remember the fact that you just hired half a dozen assassins to try to kill us. Well, specifically Penny and me, but I don’t think you would have cried about it if Dar and Ava also got caught in the crossfire.”

  “How did you--”

  “Because they’re dead,” Ava interrupted the night elf.

  “I should have known,” Tevian growled. “I should never have sent assassins to do what only I can do.”

  “And what’s that?” Dar asked. “Piss yourself in a trader’s booth while another elf dies right beside you?”

  “And as a result of your own magic?” Penny added.

  “I wasn’t fucking pissing myself,” Tevian said. “I was trying to-- I’ll fucking arrest all four of you, and then you’ll wish that you had never come to the Gold City.”

  “And how exactly do you plan to arrest all four of us at once?” I asked with another glance around to make sure there were no elven soldiers hidden somewhere.

  Other than a few people on either end of the street who had just started to stroll in our direction, there was no one else around us, and there definitely weren’t any assassins or soldiers that could have helped Tevian. Even the bystanders who started to move toward us hesitated when they saw Tevian’s angry stance, and almost all of them turned right back around and walked away.

  Most of the races knew better than to pass by an angry elf.

  “Because unless you have an army stashed away behind that booth with you,” I said, “I don’t see how you’re going to arrest or even kill one of us, much less all four of us at once.”

  “But if you want to try, be our fucking guest,” Penny spat. “Because Wade can throw your fucking blue fire back at you all damn day.”

  I wasn’t completely sure if that was true, but I appreciated the redhead’s enthusiasm. And even if I couldn’t catch the night elf’s blue spheres all day, I knew for damn sure that I could at least freeze him in place long enough to kill him and get away.

  “Fine,” Tevian snarled. “I don’t know how you’re able to use magic the way that you do, just like I don’t know how you’re even in this city, but you’re right.”

  “Why, thank you,” I said with a grin.

  “Maybe I can’t take down all four of you at once,” the night elf continued, “but I swear to the Ancients that I will come back with all of my soldiers, and there’s no way that you’ll be able to fight us all. Then they’ll throw you into jail just long enough for us to write your death certificate.”

  “And on what grounds do you plan to arrest me?” I asked. “You know, just out of curiosity.”

  “Because I saw you!” Tevian said. “I saw you use magic, and I saw--”

  “And who will believe you?” I hissed. “Wade the Thief is in a city that would take months to travel to from here, and I guarantee that if anyone were to look for me, they’d find me there.”

  “But that’s not possible,” Tevian said. “You’re right in front of me. You can’t tell me that you’re in another city at the same time.”

  The look of pure confusion on the night elf’s face brought me more joy than I had even imagined. After all, Tevian didn’t need to know about the portals that connected one city in the empire to another, just like he didn’t need to know that I could easily move from the Gold City back to our hometown in a matter of minutes.

  “Believe whatever you want,” I said with a shrug. “But I guarantee that if you start running around like a madman in your nightgown telling people there’s a human in town who can use magic and is somehow able to cross great distances in a magically short amount of time… well, your job back
home may not be the only one that you’re forced out of.”

  “They might start to think that you’re a, uh-- what’s the word?” Penny smiled. “Oh, right. A liability.”

  “No one will believe you,” I said, “but if you want to try to tell them, I won’t stop you. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “Then maybe I won’t arrest you at all,” Tevian said, as more blue flames danced between his fingers. “Maybe I’ll just sneak up on you one day, and I’ll kill you all at once.”

  “Good luck with that,” I said. “If you really thought you could do that, you would have already. You wouldn’t have hired assassins to do your dirty work for you, and you sure as shit wouldn’t just be standing here and talking to me.”

  “Face it, Skeevy-an,” Penny said. “You’re completely stuck and don’t know what the fuck you’re supposed to do.”

  “So maybe you should just take our advice,” I said. “You could always stay out of our way, and we’ll stay out of yours. What do you think?”

  “I think you can all go fuck yourselves,” Tevian said.

  “I was afraid you might say that,” I sighed. “In that case, it’s been great catching up, but we really should get going.”

  “You can’t just--”

  “Oh, but before we go, there’s just one more thing,” I interrupted the night elf. “I thought I might offer you a little bit of an olive branch, so if there’s anyone back home that you’d like me to pass along a message to or anything…”

  “There’s no one that would talk to the likes of you,” Tevian sneered.

  “Not even your dear Madame Rindell?” I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, she would be so disappointed to hear you say that…”

  “Now, I never said anything like that,” Tevian said. “You can’t tell her that I said that.”

  “Oh, you’re absolutely right,” I said. “I can’t tell her that.”

  “You mean you won’t?” Tevian asked.

  “No, I mean I can’t,” I repeated. “I mean, it’s physically impossible for me to tell her that… now, I wonder why that could be.”

  “What are you--” Tevian hesitated. “What are you trying to say?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like,” I replied. “I can’t tell Rindell anything, and she can’t hear anything, not from where she is.”

  “If you’ve done something to her--” the night elf said.

  “Oh, I haven’t done anything to her,” I said, “but someone might have.”

  “Are you saying that she-- is she-- did something happen to her?” Tevian demanded. “Is she-- by the Ancients, is she--”

  “Dead?” I finished for him.

  Tevian just stared at me, and even the blue flames died out from where they danced around his fingers.

  “Rindell got what she deserved, Tevian,” I growled, “and one day, so will you.”

  “You fucking animal!” Tevian shouted. “You fucking--”

  “See you around,” I said, and then I froze him mid-shout.

  I had done it the same way that I’d thrown Tevian’s own energy ball back at him, and that was by pure instinct. I had just wanted Tevian to stop, and half a second later, he had. And this time, all my friends stayed conscious the whole time, so I figured that I must really be getting used to using my own power.

  Everyone else who had started to walk down our street had long since disappeared, so only the four of us saw Tevian freeze in the middle of his rant, and we were also the only ones to see the ball of blue fire that had just started to form in his hands again. Now that he was frozen in place, the blue energy looked like a sphere of ice suspended in the middle of the air, and I wondered if it would just fall to the ground once Tevian unfroze.

  “I forgot that he didn’t know about Rindell,” Penny said. “That was a nice touch at the end, Wade.”

  “Well, someone had to tell the poor bastard,” I snickered.

  “I just wish we could send him on into the next life to meet her,” Ava muttered.

  “We will,” I said, “but not yet. He’s still too much of a high-profile figure to just kill outright.”

  “So what do we do?” Dar asked. “He won’t stay frozen forever.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “I know we didn’t get to place the order that we wanted to, but we’ve all got hands, so grab as much gear as you can carry, and we’ll haul ass back to the apartment.”

  Ava and Penny started to stuff as many swords and daggers into their belts as they could, while Dar buckled on several pieces of armor. Each one was bigger than the last, so he just kept buckling one on top of the other, until he almost couldn’t walk forward.

  Just when my friends had taken as much as they could, I saw the glint of elven armor appear at the end of the street, and I wondered if it was a routine patrol, or if some concerned citizen had reported all the commotion on this road.

  “You all take the back way,” I whispered, “and I’ll meet you at the apartment, alright?”

  “You got it,” Dar said.

  All three of them took off down the closest alley, while I hurried away from the still-frozen Tevian before he came back to consciousness. Just because I was better at freezing people in place whenever I wanted to now, that still didn’t mean that I could predict exactly when the effects of my magic would wear off.

  And besides, I needed to reach the elven soldiers before he woke up.

  As soon as I reached the soldiers, I stopped and pretended to catch my breath.

  “Thank the Ancients,” I gasped. “Some elf’s gone crazy back there. He threw this glowing blue sphere at another elf, and it fucking killed him! I saw it with my own eyes, and--”

  “Where?” the elven officer demanded.

  “Right there,” I said and pointed back down the street toward Tevian. “And then after he threw it, he tried to do it again, but then he-- I don’t know, it’s like he froze or something.”

  “Stay back,” the elf warned me. “This is official empire business now.”

  As the officer called out orders to his troops, they all split up and marched down the street toward Tevian, and I hurried away before their attention turned back toward me. I knew they wouldn’t kill their prized general, but at the very least, I thought they might arrest him, and that would give us a little extra time to make our next moves without Tevian right on top of us.

  When I made it back to the apartment, my friends were all already inside, even though Dar was still in the middle of taking off the six breastplates that he had managed to buckle one on top of the other. Penny and Ava had laid out all their stolen weapons on the table, and now they started to remove the chain mail that they had thrown over their shoulders back at the trader’s booth.

  “Every little bit counts,” I said with a grin. “How’d we make out in terms of weapons and armor?”

  “Hold on just a minute,” Penny said as she placed one hand on her hip. “Aren’t you gonna tell us what happened with Tevian after we left?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I told some soldiers that he’d just killed another elf, and then I left before I saw what they did with him. If they do anything, they’ll probably just arrest him.”

  “It’s too bad they won’t just kill him,” Dar sighed as he unbuckled the last breastplate. “That would make things a hell of a lot easier for us.”

  “I sure as shit hope they don’t,” I laughed.

  “Um… why not?” Penny asked. “We are both talking about Skeevy-an Tevian, right?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” I said, “but think about it. What’s the only thing that could be better than to see Tevian dead at our hands?”

  “I’m having a hard time coming up with anything better,” the pixie thief admitted.

  “Don’t you remember how satisfying it was to see him completely and utterly humiliated back home?” I asked. “I want that same thing to happen to him now, in his new home.”

  “Oh, I like that,” Dar said as he started to remove several chain
mail shirts that he had put on underneath the breastplates. “That’s what I’d call a beautiful idea, Wade.”

  “I know,” I said with a grin. “I want him to be as disgraced here as he was back home, and then I want him to be forced out of the Gold City exactly like he was forced out of his last home.”

  “And you’re not worried about what Tevian might tell them about you?” Ava asked. “About all of us?”

  “Nah,” I replied. “He has no proof of what happened, and there’s no way the elves in this city will believe that a human was able to catch a glowing sphere of elven magic and then throw it back at another elf.”

  “He might still tell them,” Dar pointed out.

  “That’s true,” I said, “but I don’t think anyone will believe him, and if anything, it’ll just make it seem like he’s losing his mind.”

  “And that will only help encourage the authorities to kick him out of the city later, right?” Penny asked.

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “Especially if the Thief’s Guild steals the temple wine and stashes it somewhere that the wild orcs can get their hands on it. They’ll go on a rampage, of course, and the city will need someone to blame.”

  “And there’s no one better to blame than the person who was supposed to have taken care of their orc problem in the first place,” Dar said.

  “That’s the idea,” I said. “I know that eventually, we’ll have to kill Tevian, but I don’t want to do it while there’s still a chance that it could disrupt our plans. So in the meantime, we might as well see him disgraced and exiled.”

  “And for the second time,” Penny said with a smirk.

  “Alright, so what all did we get?” I asked as I stepped forward to get a better look at all our stolen gear.

  Sure, we could have bought all this equipment from a different trader, but sometimes, it was hard to beat the thrill of a little bit of old-fashioned skulduggery. And as I looked at all the weapons and armor we had just stolen, I felt a keen sense of pride at our haul for the day.

  Dar had managed to take six breastplates, plus half a dozen more chain mail shirts, and he had also taken five long daggers from the elven trader’s storefront. Neither of the women had taken any heavy armor, but they had both loaded themselves down with chain mail like Dar had, so between all three of my friends, we had fifteen chain mail shirts and six armored breastplates.