The man gave her a haughty look that she felt like slapping from his face.
“That will be fine, Parker.” A commanding voice came from a grand stairway of marble that made a lazy spiral to the second floor.
Her eyebrows arched as she looked up at a tall man with wavy brown hair and a face that seemed chiseled from stone. She recovered quickly.
“You must be Gerolf,” Liesel said. “I am—“
“I know who you are,” he said with a radiant smile. “You look surprised to see me, though. You were expecting someone older, yes?”
He continued to smile as he came down the staircase.
“Yes, I was,” Liesel said, never breaking eye contact.
“You are direct. I respect that.” He extended his hand and they shook. It was his turn to be surprised when she gripped his hand hard.
“Please, come this way,” he said, turning on his heel as gracefully as a dancer. Liesel found her eyes drifting below his narrow waist.
They walked through a set of double glass doors into a sitting room twice the size of the foyer. A crystal chandelier hung above, holding what must have been a hundred sputtering candles.
Liesel traced the path of a one-inch rope that ran through a series of pulleys and was anchored to a cleat on the wall. She ignored his gesture to sit in an overstuffed chair.
“You admire my chandelier?” Gerolf asked in smug tones.
“Not even slightly,” Liesel replied with a completely flat expression. “Those candles have stained your ceiling with soot, there’s wax all over the carpet beneath, and I bet it takes two servants an hour to light the stupid thing. Also, it smells a bit like burning pig fat in here.”
He looked shocked at first, then a bit miffed, but slowly a smile crept across his face. “You have a strange way of negotiating, my dear.”
“I do,” Liesel said, and returned his smile. “To my father’s great frustration.”
“I’ve heard a great deal about your father. He’s only just arrived in these parts, but his reputation precedes him.”
“My father is a great man. He is a master of commerce and industry.”
“But you don’t follow in his footsteps.”
“Oh, I do,” Liesel said. “He taught me to stand on my strengths. Long business courtships are no good for me. Too much horseshit. I prefer to get right to the point.”
She threw back her long, heavy winter coat and removed a foot-long metal cylinder. Gerolf moved his hand to his own coat, revealing the handle of a jeweled dagger.
Liesel raised the cylinder, then brought it down next to her thigh in a single sharp motion. Snick, snap! The cylinder lengthened and three spring-loaded arms popped out. At the end of each arm a small amphorald came to life, and their combined glow filled the room with bright white light.
Gerolf covered his eyes and gaped in utter amazement.
“Too bright?” Liesel asked. She set the light fixture on a nearby table and removed a palm-sized box from her other pocket.
Turning a dial on the box brought the light down to a softer level.
“I see,” Gerolf said. “You like to put on a show.”
“I bet you’re glad you didn’t go for that dagger now.” Liesel stepped closer and handed him the dial. “Here, you try.”
“I’ve seen how it works. I’ll take five, one for each of my great rooms.”
“I only have the one,” Liesel said. “But if you give me fifty hard-working men who know how to fight and dig in the ground I can get you hundreds of these and more.”
“It seems that you’ve improved on your father’s techniques,” Gerolf said. “Now, will you sit and have drinks with me? We’ll discuss details.”
Liesel flopped down on the nearest couch like she owned the place. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Gerolf threw back his head and laughed as he crossed the room to a dry bar. “I can tell doing business with you will be very interesting.”
“You have no idea,” she replied, watching him pour.
CHAPTER TEN
Liesel’s March
The trip back up the mountain with seventy-five men—all with weapons, food, and mining gear—didn’t take half as long as Liesel expected. At first Liesel had thought Gerolf was just trying to impress her. He said everything with an air of superiority and confidence that made him seem boastful. Surely not everything he said could be true.
When she hit him with that opinion he didn’t look surprised. “Like you, my father taught me a great deal. He was a great man. I never say anything that I can’t back up with deeds.”
“And here I thought you suffered from unearned confidence,” Liesel quipped with a wry smile.
His laugh was magical and made her spine tingle. “I assure you that all my confidence is well-earned.” He rested his hand on the hilt of the short sword he wore on his right hip.
“Well, you definitely need confidence to be a left-handed swordsman,” Liesel replied. Not counting his ridiculous sex appeal, Gerolf didn’t seem to have magical ability.
He rode closer. “I think I proved my ability to wield a sword quite well last night.”
She flushed, but recovered quickly. Now he had to work for it after the fact. “You were adequate in the first round,” she replied.
“Adequate?” he asked, falling back as the trail narrowed. They were nearly at the meeting point.
Father was waiting for them on his fine black stallion. Horace and his stablemate Virgil were long in the tooth, but they’d brought them all the way from Arcadia to these lands. They were battle-tested and hardened.
Liesel immediately dismounted and began transferring her gear to Virgil. The brown mare was thrilled at the lump of beet sugar Liesel had nicked from the breakfast tray that morning.
When she was done, her father handed over her rifle and all was right with the world again.
Gerolf couldn’t take his eyes off the weapon. From its long black barrel tipped with a blood-red gem to the brass receiver that held the amphorald, down to its polished oak stock, there was no weapon like it in the protectorates.
Liesel introduced Gerolf to her father after her horse was packed and she was armed. The two shook hands cordially.
“I wasn’t expecting so quick a response,” Yarik said. “But I was more than happy to receive your messenger.”
“Not at all,” Gerolf replied. “You, your daughter, and I…we are all people of action. I saw an opportunity and jumped at it.”
Her father smiled and nodded. Liesel could practically hear the business gears grinding in that head of his. He knew Liesel had hooked this customer, and it was now his job to reel him in and serve him up. This was the beginning of a new empire.
The men ate dried meat and apples from their saddlebags while they rode.
Gerolf ended up beside Yarik, and he watched the old man fiddle with a copper box. The device sported a three-inch glass panel, behind which a single clock arm rotated on a pin. Several knobs and switches bristled at seemingly random points around the glass panel.
“Is this another magitech device?” Gerolf asked.
“Yes,” Yarik answered flatly. His sales personality fell by the wayside as he concentrated.
Liesel supplied more detail. “That is an amphorald detector that my father invented. It responds to magical energy.”
“Potential magical energy in mineral form, to be exact,” Yarik replied. “The amphoralds themselves don’t contain magic unless they are charged. But these readings are very strange and I’m having trouble tuning in. There seem to be both amphoralds and strong magic nearby.”
She had another reason for getting closer to Yarik; her father looked worried. As she watched the movement of the dial and the blinking lights, she knew there was a problem.
Liesel and Yarik had followed the dial to arrive in these mountains, and now they were on the hunt for amphoralds. Finding fertile ground for weapons sales and intrigue was just a bonus. But this might be a complication.
“Why do you both look worried?” Gerolf asked, now concerned as well.
Liesel glanced at her father to ask if she should tell him and Yarik nodded.
“The box is picking up the presence of magic users,” Liesel said.
“This far up in the mountains?”
“Yes,” one of the hired men interjected. “I was with Compliance Officer Jank’s outfit before that bitch killed him. Jank was hired by Lungu’s son to come up here. Seems there was a bandit camp around here—a big one.”
“Bandits?” Yarik asked, lifting his head from the dial.
“Yes,” Gerolf replied with a sigh. “Scum, really. They’re not known to use magic. They’re primitive types who live in the woods and survive by stealing grain from tribute shipments. I’d heard that Jank was hired to take a chunk out of their number.”
“And he failed?” Liesel asked.
“Turned out to be a trap. They were ambushed,” the former compliance man answered.
Liesel brought the entire formation to a halt.
“What?” Gerolf asked.
“What do you mean, ‘what?’” Liesel said. “We might be walking into enemy territory.”
“That’s why we brought seventy-five fighters,” Gerolf stated. “As I recall, you asked for only fifty. I threw in the extra twenty-five for free…and added crossbows and ammunition.”
“Yeah,” Jank’s former thug said. “We have enough now, and they won’t be expecting us. We can finish the job.”
Liesel dismounted and adjusted her rifle. “I’ll take the box and do some recon.”
Yarik handed her the device, and again they spoke without words. She gave him a touch on the shoulder to tell him she’d be careful.
When she headed into the woods, Gerolf was behind her with a crossbow. “Where do you think you’re going?” Liesel demanded.
“With you,” he answered with that disarming smile. “A good businessman always protects his investments.”
“If you make too much noise I’m sending you back.”
He didn’t. She was impressed by how capable he was in the woods, and how careful he was to minimize his tracks. When she paused to check the device, he didn’t whisper. He explained himself after seeing her obvious surprise.
“Yes,” he said in her ear in a low voice. “I know whispers carry more than low-volume speech. I grew up hunting in these lands.”
The needle wandered for a few more minutes until she adjusted its sensitivity. They were close.
They were crouching behind the trunk of a huge pine when they heard a wet cough. It took them awhile to see the incredibly old burly man hunkered down in the low branches of a tree. He had taken pains to breathe through his scarf, until he had to cough. They could see the steam as he adjusted himself and looked around.
When they were sure the old man hadn’t seen them, they went back to tell the others. The expedition had turned into a raid.
Liesel stood with both fists on her hips on a low rise above seventy-five bloodthirsty men who wanted to earn their keep. “Well, here we are. This thing has turned from a mining expedition into an extermination job. What do you think about that?”
The lusty cheers made her smile. She only hoped they were far enough from the sentries near the cave for the sound not to reach them, but then again, the one had looked well past retirement age.
Back at the caves
The old sentry had all his teeth and all his hearing, which was more than he could say for Misty. She needed a rock thrown at her to come alert.
She dropped the ten feet from her perch to the ground, and for a moment she looked like just another mound of snow. When she popped back up, she’d shed everything but the light deerskin one-piece suit that was older than her grandchildren.
Misty knew exactly what to do. The elder sentry gave a set of hand motions telling her which direction to scout.
Misty shrugged her shoulders and rolled her neck, and her spine cracked like icy branches in a stiff wind. She took off, bounding through the snow like a deer.
“Damn, I love that woman,” Curtis declared way too loudly. He had lost most of his teeth along with most of his hearing.
The elder grabbed his face and spoke directly into his ear. “Set the traps and take your position.”
Curtis ran much more stiffly than his wife. The old man put two fingers in his mouth and gave one short whistle. It was enough to set things in motion.
A much younger sentry closer to the caves heard the alarm and tapped his partner on the shoulder, then ran deep into the cave. His partner grabbed a quiver and scaled a tree as fast as a chipmunk could have.
The alarm traveled faster than wildfire throughout the cave.
Vinnie was just finishing a hearty breakfast with Gerty, who was pleased but also a little shocked at how much Vinnie could eat.
“How do you like the—" she started to ask.
A group of young children trotted briskly through the cavern. There must have been twenty, joined hand-to-hand. Their leader was a short and round young woman with small intense eyes set close together.
“Hurry now, hurry now,” the lead girl chanted. “Stay calm. Work to do.”
Gerty was on her feet in a flash. It took Vinnie a second longer to figure out what was happening. “Keep them safe, Yulia,” Gerty called as the children marched by.
“I’ll take care of them, Gramma Gerty!” Yulia promised as she guided her flock into a tunnel on the other side of the cavern.
“We’re under attack?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Gerty replied, darting over to a wooden chest. “But they’re coming.” She shucked off her robe and started slipping knives and small hatchets into leather straps on her leather halter. She was all lean muscle and sinew.
She slipped the robe back on and ran ghostlike toward the entry with the robe billowing around her.
Vinnie followed as they tore through the complex passages toward the surface. They must have passed more than a hundred children and disabled people. Some of the adults were missing limbs or had obvious challenges in the way their bodies were formed, but everyone moved with purpose. There was no fear, only determination.
In a larger chamber filled with stalagmites and stalactites they found a group of about fifty fighters, both young and old, staging arrows and rocks ready to be thrown.
“Slings,” Vinnie said. “I haven’t seen those in a long while.”
“Old ways,” Gerty said, with a surprisingly casual smile. “We’ve been through this over the years.”
Vinnie spotted Tarkon and Moxy on the other side of the cavern.
“What’s happening?” Gerty asked as she ran toward them.
“Misty made a recon run,” Tarkon said. “Says there’re about fifty attackers heading this way.”
“I’m sorry.” Vinnie fixed Gerty with sad eyes. “I didn’t think this would happen.”
“If I thought this was your fault, man-mountain, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Tarkon shook his head. “This is something else. They were all well-armed, but they were fitted for mining as well as a raid.”
“So we’re just a bonus,” Gerty said. “The goat-fuckers.” She trembled with anger, then reined it in and channeled it into fighting motivation. The little bit of mental magic Vinnie had learned let him feel her rage, and it gave him energy.
“What’s the plan, Gerty?” Vinnie asked. “Your house, your rules.”
“You already know the strategy,” Gerty replied as she led the way up the passage. “You used it yourself last time. We lure them in and let them think we’re weak, then we show them otherwise.”
“Moxy?” Tarkon said. He didn’t have to say anything else.
“Scouting,” she replied and began to shuck off her light armor. With no clothes, she was nearly impossible to see. A seemingly disembodied voice said, “I’m on it.”
Gerty chuckled. “I thought I’d lived long enough to see everything.”
They r
an toward the mouth of the cave where they took up positions and became the steel teeth in the mouth of a trap.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Revenge of the Desk Job
Astrid walked with Merg and George behind her. She felt the need to keep a personal guard with her at all times, but not because she feared for her life. The guard was to increase the chance that one person could run to get help and alert the others in case of an attack.
So far the fortress seemed secure. Astrid had made it clear that those who had a problem with her should leave.
But there were still some who had worked closely with the dead Protector, and a few of them stuck around for reasons Astrid couldn’t figure out. She let them stay, following the wisdom that one should keep friends close and enemies closer.
The few discovered to be outright criminals Astrid had no problem locking up in the very convenient jail on the lower levels of the fortress.
When she reached the heavy steel jail door, Merg and George stopped a few paces away.
“We’ll stay here, if it’s all the same to you,” Merg said.
She found it strange, but she reflexively agreed. They seemed uncomfortable.
“Hello, Benny,” Astrid said to the reluctant jailer. “How are you holding up?”
“Very busy,” he answered, then rushed to explain himself. “I mean, we’re complying with all your orders. The prisoners are safe. We’re making sure they don’t get messages in or out…”
“Benny,” Astrid interjected, “relax. You’re doing a great job. I trust you, or you wouldn’t be here. Remember, this is temporary. Once the commissioners start enforcing the law again, we’ll have a regular jail with regular old garden-variety criminals—hopefully not too many.”
Benny just smiled and retrieved his keyring from a locked cabinet. He told another guard to stand watch while he led Astrid to one of those special prisoners.
She found Treasurer Brol sitting in a cell made cramped by a small table and chair. He was reading a heavy leather-bound book by lamplight, but he closed the tome and stood when Astrid entered his cell.
“Hello, Protector Astrid,” Brol said, bowing slightly. He didn’t offer his hand, but his greeting showed genuine respect.
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