Black Guild

by J. P. Ashman

  ‘Are we discovered?’ Coppin asked.

  ‘Damned waves,’ Egan muttered.

  Severun’s eyes shifted colour, shape even, much like that of a frog or toad. Static rose Coppin’s long, green-black hair.

  ‘The window!’ Egan rushed into the room where white smoke clung to the ceiling like a bank of cloud. The others followed when they heard the door to the street smash open.

  ‘It’s too high to jump,’ Egan said, looking at Coppin. He knew he would make it, knew Longoss would probably bounce and that Severun could likely create a bed of feathers to land in, should he so choose, but Coppin and her unborn child?

  Another concussive thud outside, in the street, followed by shouts, which in turn was followed by booted feet on the stairs. Many feet.

  ‘Just bloody go!’ Coppin shouted, a hand on her stomach, Egan noticed. He noticed Severun’s apparent ease at the situation too, following the shifting of his eyes.

  ‘Hold!’ a gruff voice shouted from the other room.

  Longoss growled and turned, knife in hand. Coppin mirrored him. Egan gritted his teeth and spanned and loaded his small crossbow whilst Severun pushed to the front, causing Coppin’s hair to lift like she was submerged in water.

  At the first sign of movement in the room beyond, Egan grabbed Longoss’ arm and pulled him back as Severun threw his hands high, a smile about his face; Coppin’s hair dropped about her shoulders.

  ‘Thank Samorl,’ Egan breathed, relaxing as the green and white quartered livery of the Duke of Yewdale filled the far room. ‘It’s Morton’s men!’

  ‘Severun,’ Sir Merrel said, ahead of half a dozen men-at-arms, ‘I have a message.’

  ‘I don’t even want to know how they found us.’ Longoss ground gold.

  Egan narrowed his eyes on Sir Merrel, then looked sidelong to Severun. ‘Oh, I have an idea how,’ he said, fixed on the wizard and his smile. He thought back to the message he and Severun had sent from Keep’s tavern, to Lord Strickland.

  Severun met Egan’s eyes and grinned all the more.

  ***

  ‘Well, Master Son?’ Pangan sat with his head in hands, elbows on knees, much like he had whilst watching Terrina and Rapeel take Bronwen’s poison pad.

  ‘Well what?’ Poi Son crouched alongside Pangan, high on a roof overlooking the broken red door of the guild’s, or rather Bronwen’s, centre for magic, white smoke lifting from the back of the building. They’d watched a knight, mage and men-at-arms in unmistakable livery enter the building after a brief scrap with what could only have been Bronwen’s watchers. There’d been a sudden and audible display of magic from both sides – posturing more than anything, Pangan thought – before the watchers departed and the soldiers entered the building, the same number remaining in the street outside, watching, alert, the mage amongst them. These were dangerous men, Pangan mused, professional soldiers the lot of them, the female mage worst of all. They made the City Guard look like village militia.

  ‘Well, what do you think of Longoss and his chums hitting Bronwen’s place? And, what do you think of the Lord High Constable of bloody Altoln’s men showing up but a moment later? This is far from the Duke’s city abode, Master Son.’

  ‘It is, yes.’ Poi Son pursed his lips and wrapped an instrument string around his left index finger, before unravelling it and starting again. He repeated the process several times.

  ‘Well, Master Son?’

  ‘I think, Pangan, we finally know who’s aiding our friend Longoss.’ Poi Son looked to Pangan, grinned and retreated from their position on the roof, a boy and girl following.

  Pangan sighed, rubbed his face hard and followed. ‘Like that’s a good thing to discover,’ he said to himself as he moved away. ‘Least we don’t need to send the masks in there now.’ It was Pangan’s turn to grin. And Poi Son was pissed off with my choice for the first assault, he thought. If I’d had Terrina and Rapeel hit this place instead of the poison pad, he looked back over his shoulder at the smoke lifting into the sky, we’d have missed all the fun and revelations.

  Chapter 37 – Back to the rooftops

  Pangan watched from the rooftop, face set in a scowl as white and red masks appeared in the wide doorway of a burning building. Screams came from within. A man pitched from a window three stories up, breaking and burning on the cobbles below. Pangan heard the hue and cry, locals screaming for the City Guard and for water. He watched as a man ran from a neighbouring building. When the man saw the two masks, he halted, scrabbled to turn and raced back inside, face awash with fear.

  ‘What have we released,’ Pangan whispered. The lad and lass beside him looked his way but said nothing. Their eyes moved back to the street below, where Terrina and Rapeel were untying stolen horses and mounting them, looking back to the flickering, spitting and crackling mess of the building they’d assaulted. The duo urged their mounts on. On to the next target. Poi Son had decided on multiple, swift strikes against Bronwen, rather than a single, grand assault. Longoss and his merry men, and woman, had clearly begun targeting the guild indiscriminately, not caring which guild master, or mistress, they worked against. That being the case, Poi Son knew Bronwen’s third of the guild would be suffering as much as his own, or thereabouts, being that her operations were spread throughout Wesson. Still, the few holds she commanded in Dockside itself were to be struck and torched throughout the night, and damn the consequences. Poi Son’s very words, as Pangan remembered them.

  The attack on Bronwen’s poison pad in Guild District had been all Pangan had planned, truth be told, but upon reporting back to an annoyed-to-say-the-least Poi Son, they’d moved on Bronwen’s centre of magic, only to witness Longoss and his allies doing the very same.

  And that was it. As far as Poi Son was concerned, there was now an opportunity to strike Bronwen everywhere. Fast and hard. Now, it wasn’t outside the centuries old laws of the guild for Pangan to refuse Poi Son, to refuse a mark, but it was another thing entirely to directly refuse Poi Son in an official war within the guild, especially when Poi Son was acting so out of character; unpredictably. Pangan had thrived for years because he knew his master well. He knew Poi Son’s moods and whims and knew, most importantly, his business. Pangan felt like he didn’t know anything now, apart from the fact that Poi Son had potentially ripped the Black Guild asunder. It wasn’t like there was never infighting, but this… well, this was as worse as it could get. It was all he could do to curb his masked assassins from wiping Bronwen’s known haunts out altogether in that one night, the speed of them. When he’d ensured them that all of this was necessary before they could find and face Longoss – the reason they’d taken the vials Poi Son had procured for them, Pangan thought they’d been about to rip him to pieces. He shuddered at the recent memory.

  Sighing and motioning for the young watchers to depart, Pangan took one last look at the destruction the two masked assassins delivered, before turning and following the watchers across the rooftops, on towards the next target in the escalating, ridiculous war.

  ***

  ‘But we have Morton’s support,’ Longoss said, trying to calm Keep, who was pointing a loaded crossbow down into the cellar at Longoss.

  ‘I don’t give a rat’s shit if we have King Barrison’s!’ Keep ground his teeth between shouts and curses. ‘And do you forget what that bastard Morton did to you, eh? Have you forgotten?’

  Longoss huffed. ‘Of course not.’ He lowered his arms to his sides, then pointed at the man aiming the crossbow at him. ‘Mind, ye’d be a damned sight worse off, likely dead, if Morton hadn’t fucked me over, Keep.’

  Coppin, Egan and Severun watched the exchange, eyes flicking in unison from one man to the other, switching each time to the one speaking, or flinging insults.

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Coppin dared.

  ‘Not now!’ both men said at once.

  Coppin scowled and folded her arms.

  ‘There’s no time for this…’ Egan clamped his mouth shut as the crossbow shi
fted to point at him. He took a breath and looked away.

  The weapon swung back to Longoss, who’d taken a step forward.

  ‘Even if it is how you say, you’ll lose, Longoss. You’ll all bloody lose. Gods below.’ Keep took a deep breath and unloaded and relaxed the bow. ‘The whole city will lose if the Black Guild goes to—’

  ‘It’s at war, Keep,’ Longoss said, voice steady, firm. ‘Poi Son and Bronwen have already begun—’

  ‘No thanks to you lot!’ Keep shouted, knuckles white with crossbow in one hand and bolt in the other. His shoulders slumped and he leaned back against the wall, slid down it to sit there. ‘You said you were going after Poi Son.’

  ‘I said, Keep, that I were going to bring the bastards down. The lot of ’em.’

  ‘People say such things, I didn’t think I—’

  ‘I gave me word, Keep.’ They locked eyes on one another. ‘Ye knew that, so ye were kidding no one but yerself if ye thought I were blowing nought but bluster about it all.’

  Keep was nodding slowly. ‘And so it is, the end of us all.’

  ‘Oh please,’ Coppin said.

  Keep grunted a laugh. ‘Coppin, lass.’ He looked at her now. ‘You’ve seen how bad it’s got already, I know you have. What do you think will happen now, with so many sides involved? Poi Son, Bronwen, your little pack, the Lord High Constable of Altoln and… and,’ he said, back to Longoss, ‘Alden-Fenn when he’s back in Wesson. Alden-Fenn, Longoss! ’Morl’s ass-crack, man. Poi Son and Bronwen are the only two who keep that berserker in check; together. Together,’ he said, sounding out the word as if Longoss’ loss of ears demanded it. ‘What now? He returns and his business mam and dad are at war with one another? Ye think, in that tiny thick head of yours, that he’ll take a side? Ye think Alden-fucking-Fenn will take your side?’

  Longoss swallowed hard, but nodded.

  Keep burst into incredulous laughter, shaking his head all the while and staring at Longoss, Coppin, Egan and finally Severun. ‘I suppose the magic man is going to whisk Alden-Fenn’s shites away on a wind from is arse, whilst blowing kisses to fellow mage Bronwen, wooing her enough with glamours so Coppin here can skip up to Poi Son and place her pretty knife through his heart, eh? Eh, Longoss?’

  ‘Ye’re being stupid now.’ Coppin slumped against the nearest wall, much like Keep was.

  ‘I’m being stupid?’ Keep roared, throwing himself forward onto all fours and looking down on them all with utter contempt. ‘I put you bastards up, here, in my home! I risked it all so you could fuck about with Poi Son’s trade. So you could piss him off enough so he’d show his ugly face. So you could cut that ugly face from his head and be done with it.’ Keep lifted himself to kneeling and squeezed his head between his hands. ‘I didn’t put you up to invite a fucking Duke’s army to march on my tavern, to relieve a fucking siege by the Black bastard Guild!’ He shook with red-faced rage and fell back, laughing hysterically. ‘We’re all dead.’

  Longoss leaned in to Egan. ‘Went better than I thought, that.’

  Egan hung his head and groaned.

  ***

  ‘Is it accurate?’ Poi Son said, eyes on his lute as he restrung it.

  How is he so calm? Pangan thought, nodding. He realised Poi Son wouldn’t see the nod and voiced his confirmation instead.

  Poi Son nodded now, eyes on his working fingers. ‘I had heard rumours, had even thought it true myself,’ Poi Son said, looking up, ‘but I’d never have believed, if I was honest: that Keep was stupid enough to put Longoss up. Not with a mark on his old protégé’s head.’

  Pangan shrugged. ‘Well he has. It comes from more than one source and that’s after a couple of days of quiet from Longoss and his cronies, so makes sense.’

  ‘All of a sudden though?’ Poi Son frowned.

  ‘Aye.’

  Pursing his lips, Poi Son placed the lute on its stand, crossed to his chair and sat, resting his head against the chair’s high back. ‘They want us to know this. Now, specifically now,’ he said, eyes meeting Pangan’s once more. ‘They were quiet because they were planning it.’

  ‘Reckon so, Master Son. Reckon Mistress Bronwen will know too, wherever she is.’

  Poi Son started at that. It was subtle, but Pangan caught it. ‘You’re right, I’m sure. Nothing misses her, especially information meant for her.’

  It was Pangan’s turn to frown. ‘You think Longoss wants her to know too?’

  ‘I think, Pangan,’ Poi Son said, leaning forward, ‘that Longoss would have Alden-Fenn know if it was within his power to communicate across the sea.’

  ‘Why?’ Pangan moved closer, trailed his fingers through the dust on the sideboard, lifting it into the air. He stopped when he saw Poi Son’s glare. Swallowing hard, he asked again. ‘Why would Longoss want all three of you to know where he is? Especially after all the shit he’s caused and continues to cause the guild, warring as it is or not.’

  ‘Because, my dear Pangan,’ Poi Son said, wincing at Pangan’s choice of language, ‘he wants us all to attend his show. He wants us all together in one place,’ he said, wagging a finger at Pangan, ‘so we do to each other what he cannot hope to do to us himself.’ Poi Son smiled and sat back again, fingers folded in his lap.

  Pangan raised his brow in realisation. After a moment’s pause, silent but for the sound of the gulls and the street below the shuttered window he crossed to, Pangan asked what Poi Son would do.

  And this is where I see your true colours, Master Son, Pangan thought, eyeing the man he’d served for a decade or more, perhaps a lot more. It wasn’t as if Pangan had counted the years. He didn’t even know how old he was, or had been when recruited by Poi Son. He set his jaw and awaited an answer he couldn’t predict. He was glad the weight of it all wasn’t on him. He didn’t want to be a master, never had, so the other thing playing on his mind, the crossroads he’d reached in his life – for which he wasn’t even sure he had a choice – made what Poi Son was telling him all the worse, all the harder to think about. He grimaced and passed it off as a reaction to the plan Poi Son revealed. If it could be called a plan. Suicide was more like it. Suicide capped with hubris. He laughed to himself, in his head. Hubris. The word impressed him. He’d learnt a lot over the years, off Poi Son; not to count properly, high or anything, nor to read or write, not much, anyway, but he had learnt from the man. From the master assassin. He’d learnt his trade and he’d learnt much more. He just wasn’t sure whether he’d learnt loyalty; whether he’d ever learnt it in the first place or whether he’d lost it sometime in between.

  Either way, Pangan thought, acknowledging Poi Son and pardoning himself so he could go and action the man’s plans, I’ve certainly found it now, this loyalty. Just not for you, Master Son. Not for you.

  Chapter 38 - Besieging your own

  ‘You gonna talk to me now, Coppin,’ Longoss said, ‘before things get nasty?’

  ‘They’ve not got nasty already?’ She leaned in close with her whisper. The lamps were out in Keep’s cellar, their two companions asleep. Severun snored an irritating whistle of a snore; whistling in, grating out.

  ‘Coppin…’ Don’t change the subject, lass. Not now.

  Lights weren’t needed, nor were Longoss’ ears, to sense the tenseness in Coppin, the shudder of her deep breath. A few whistling, grating moments passed before Coppin answered, voice low, an audible tremble present.

  ‘I’m carrying a child.’

  The whistle and grate of Severun’s breathing filled the void that followed those words. It ended with a grunt. Coppin had thrown something, accurately, Longoss knew.

  ‘It can’t be mine?’

  Coppin’s huff was louder than her whispers. ‘I worry about you sometimes, Longoss. Of course it’s not yours. Would that it was.’

  Longoss sucked in a breath, a shocked breath, but not a bad shock, not the kind you’d get finding a spider in your boot or an angry father in your room. No, this was a new kind of shock, or rather a rare one. He’d experi
enced such a rush of emotion, pleasant emotion, once before. Elleth, he thought, and felt guilty considering the person he now felt those same feelings for curled beside him, under the same wool blanket.

  ‘You didn’t expect me to say that, did you?’

  Longoss shook his head. ‘No.’

  There was silence for a time, bliss, considering the snoring would start again soon.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be mine, lass, to be mine.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Longoss could hear the frown in Coppin’s breathy question. He knew her that well now. Knew her better than he’d known anyone in his life. Well, almost anyone. Perhaps he’d consider Correia regarding such things, albeit a long time ago. Not now though and certainly not with such emotions. His and her relationship had been purely platonic, with a little friendship thrown in, he’d always liked to think. Until Morton stuck his fucking beak in. Bastard.

  ‘Longoss?’

  ‘Ye know what I mean, lass. The babe doesn’t have to be from me, for me to be a father—’

  ‘I’m not keeping it; not birthing the damned thing, Longoss.’

  It was Longoss’ turn to frown, a real eye-narrowing brow creaser. He said nothing and the pause drew on until Coppin explained.

  ‘I asked Severun to—’

  ‘The wizard knows?’

  ‘Aye, and Egan.’

  Longoss rolled away, looked pointlessly to the unseen ceiling above.

  ‘Severun told me, Longoss. I didn’t know, or rather didn’t want to know.’

  He felt her hands shift and imagined them crossing over on her stomach. He liked that image; he hated the image her talk was forcing in its way. ‘And he’s gonna zap it out, is he? Murder the tiny thing in a flash.’

  ‘What would you know?’ Coppin’s tone dripped venom.

  Fear, he thought. Fear leads to such tones in most folk. ‘Nothing it seems. All’s I know was I was dragged into this world, costing me ma her life for it and hated by me da for it. And he was me real da. My. Real. Da. Blood is as good as piss, Coppin. It’s in here that makes a family.’ He reached over and planted his big left hand above her left breast, felt the beating, felt the love.