“Lirah Darrens?” he exclaimed, voice booming out at an almost deafening volume. “Guildmaster Maley, have you an idea of where she is?”
“I know exactly where she is.” Siobhan concealed a wince as her abused ears protested. “Sir, there is much that needs to be explained and I will happily do so, but right now I need an escort of your strongest men. Lirah’s party was ambushed by assassins and they are gravely hurt. They need refuge.”
“They have it,” he granted immediately, without a second’s hesitation. “Nortin, arrange a guard of fifty men. Guildmaster Maley, do you judge that to be sufficient?”
She judged that to be overkill but wasn’t about to say so. “Thank you, yes.”
Nortin gave a short bow before disappearing from the room.
“Where are they?” Jarnsmor pressed, coming around the table to speak with her more directly. “You said ambushed? Where?”
“They are in Vakkiod, and yes, ambushed. In fact, Lirah was within sight of Sateren when they were hit.”
Jarnsmor couldn’t conceal a wince. “In my own front yard? By who?!”
“I swore not to say their name,” she apologized, spreading her palms in a helpless gesture.
Rune, at her shoulder, cleared his throat. “Actually, ya promised not ta tell Blackstone who attacked them.”
Oh? Come to think of it, he was right. Siobhan gave him an admiring glance. “Rune, you crafty rascal. You’re quite right, I did promise them only that, didn’t I? In that case…Guildmaster, it was Silent Order that did the attack. In all fairness, however, they were hired to do so and did not know the identity of their victims.”
“Silent Order,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “Hired or not, they should have known better. Who hired them?”
“Now that’s a question I don’t have a whole answer to. The only thing that my informant could tell me was that it was a guild from Coravine.”
Jarnsmor blinked at her blankly. “Coravine? Coravine, Orin?”
“You know, that’s exactly what my reaction was.” Siobhan rubbed at the bridge of her nose briefly. “It still doesn’t make an ounce of sense to me. I hope that once you, and the guildmaster of Silver Moon, put your heads together with Lirah, you can come up with a good explanation. I’d even take a good theory at this point.”
He rubbed at his chin in deep contemplation. “Of all the ideas I entertained, this wasn’t among them. How very mysterious. But theorizing can wait, I think, until they are safely here. How many are injured?”
“Thirteen heavily injured, two lightly so,” Wolf supplied behind her.
“I’ll make preparations.”
“Sir, I haven’t found a moment yet to send word back to Blackstone reassuring Darrens that we found them,” Siobhan offered.
“I’ll notify him as well,” Jarnsmor promised.
“Also, can you tell me if Guildmaster Hammon has arrived safely?”
“Indeed he has, two weeks ago.” Jarnsmor tapped a fist against his lips. “I wonder why he wasn’t attacked as well?”
Also a question she wanted an answer to. Siobhan had quite a stack of things that didn’t make sense to her at the moment and she didn’t like it. “I’m just as grateful he wasn’t, sir, as his son is in my guild.”
Jarnsmor’s brows shot up. “Is he now? Then should I inform Hammon he’s coming?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.” She’d certainly tell Markl his father was safe and sound. “But for now, I’d like to go back to Vakkiod and help Lirah get everyone ready for transport. I have a Pathfinder standing by, ready to bring people here. If you can have your escort wait for us at the path’s end? We only need them for escort through the city and to here.”
“Certainly. No one can attack while you’re on the path, after all.”
True. An open path was impenetrable to anyone outside of it. It was one of the benefits of traveling that Siobhan enjoyed. That and skipping over hundreds of spans within minutes.
“Then with your leave, we’ll return shortly.”
It was no mean feat moving all of Lirah’s party to Iron Dragain’s main compound. Her people were willing, but hurting, and everyone took care to move them as painlessly as possible. Even with dedicated help, it took most of the day to make the trip and get them settled again.
At least they were in better quarters now. Jarnsmor gave them a whole wing of rooms that were right in the main building, each room a near copy of its neighbor. The rooms all had two mid-sized poster beds, a small table and chairs in the center of the room, with a window that looked out over a manicured garden. It had an airiness that the cramped storage room in Vakkiod had not, and Siobhan fancied that a person couldn’t help but feel a little better staying in rooms these nice.
Because of her preoccupation with Blackstone’s people, Siobhan missed it when Hammon Senior came and found his eldest son. In fact, she hadn’t even known the man was in the building until she went into the common room that linked all the rooms together.
Markl, who sat facing her direction, caught her eye and waved her forward. She did so without hesitation, openly studying the man sitting on the couch next to him. Superficially, he didn’t look in the least like Markl. His hair was a dark chestnut, skin pale from lack of sun, with a paunch that suggested he preferred sitting at a desk over being out and about. But then he turned to look at her, smiling in greeting, and she saw the similarity. He had the same smile and easy charm as his son.
He rose to his feet at her approach, Markl rising with him and offering the introductions, “Father, this is Siobhan Maley, Guildmaster of Deepwoods. Siobhan, my father, Nuel Hammon, Guildmaster of Silver Moon.”
“Exaltations and blessings upon your house, family, and companions,” Nuel Hammon greeted, extending a hand.
She blinked, not expecting this highly formal greeting, but managed to accept the hand with a firm grip and reply in kind, “Exaltations and joy to you and yours.”
Judging from that slightly startled look from Hammon, he hadn’t expected her to know the proper way to respond, but was pleased by it. Why he thought that, she had no idea. Anyone spending any amount of time around Markl would pick up on all the niceties eventually. She’d never met a more polite man. “Thank you. Forgive my surprise, Guildmaster Maley. I have heard of you and your reputation is excellent, but I had not thought you to be so young.”
Siobhan couldn’t help but laugh ruefully. “I was made guildmaster at a ridiculously early age. I am relieved to see that you arrived here without trouble, sir.”
“I’m just as glad to be here without being attacked, although I am very sorry that Lirah Darrens’ party was not as fortunate. Markl has told me what you have discovered and I have some theories regarding the matter.”
She cocked her head slightly. “I would certainly like to hear them. My mind has twisted itself into knots trying to make sense of this.”
He waved her to a nearby chair, silently inviting her to make herself comfortable. After the day she’d had, he didn’t have to twist her arm. She promptly settled herself into a wing backed chair that faced the couch.
The common room had been designed to either conduct business meetings in or for socializing. It had a variety of chairs, couches, and settees that were arranged in small circles so that people could comfortably sit and converse. It had no windows here, as it sat in the middle of the building, but someone had installed skylights in the ceiling which cast enough natural light for the room to naturally glow. One spot of sunlight hit the chair she sat in and warmed it up quite pleasantly. She unconsciously smiled as the warmth settled along her back.
As soon as she’d settled, Hammon relaxed back into his own seat, legs comfortably crossed and hands resting on his stomach. “Markl tells me that you’re aware of the purpose of Silver Moon, Blackstone and Iron Dragain all meeting?”
“To form a trade monopoly,” she responded bluntly.
“Quite so.” A brief smile darted over his face. “We’d hoped that by doing so we could af
ford to expand and raise the levels of the bridges, as I’m afraid that if we don’t start fixing them now, they’ll become nigh unusable in fifty years.”
He might very well be right. It took luck, timing, and speed to cross the bridges now, and the larger caravans had to do it in stages in order to clear them before the tides rose to a dangerous level. If something wasn’t done about them soon, it would be impossible to cross the bridges quickly enough, and they’d have to abandon them altogether and start shipping everything by sea. Just the idea made her wince. “So, the monopoly was in fact proposed to finance the project.”
He spread his hands in a helpless shrug. “We couldn’t come up with another viable option. No one guild has the means to do such a thing, and it’s dangerous for just one guild to be in charge of the project to begin with. It would encourage a sense of…ownership, I’m afraid. And if they feel that they own the bridge, all sorts of trouble will eventually arise from it.”
Like levies and taxes that no one would be willing to pay but would be willing to fight about. Yes, didn’t that picture just give her a headache. “I see your point.”
“We’d thought that with three of us, we’d have the means to fix the bridges, and no one guild would be responsible for it, so it would avoid trouble. Of course, many are going to be unhappy about our creating a monopoly on select trade goods in order to manage this…but we’ve only so many resources to draw upon. In order to make this happen, something needs to be sacrificed.”
She lifted a hand and rubbed at one temple. “Someone in Coravine disagrees with you, sir.”
He grimaced. “And more vehemently than I predicted, too. We knew that people would be unhappy with what we did here, at least in the beginning, but to actually send assassins? That was completely outside of our predictions.”
“Fallen Ward is the guild over Coravine. Do you believe them to be behind this?”
“I can’t imagine that an attack of this significance was planned and executed without their knowledge. Were they the ones behind it? I don’t know. I wouldn’t think them this foolhardy, to attack Blackstone openly like this, but then I didn’t imagine that anyone would send assassins period.”
Markl cleared his throat slightly. “We believe that their plan was made so that we would never know their identity. It was meant to frame either Iron Dragain or Silver Moon for the attack so that we would never suspect anyone else.”
“If not for the fact that I stumbled across a man who used to work for Silent Order, and he brought me to an informant of that guild, we might not have put it all together,” Siobhan added. “If you think about it, that was an amazingly fortunate stroke of luck that I was able to pull it off. In normal circumstances, I’d never have been able to manage that in a foreign city. Of course, Iron Dragain would have been able to find the same information…”
“But under the circumstances, with them being the suspects, if they’d come to us and said that it was a guild from Orin that had ordered the attack, we’d never have believed them,” Markl finished grimly. “It’s only because you were the one that discovered it that everyone can believe it.”
“So really, their original plan had a very high success rate,” she concluded, lifting her shoulders in a shrug. “We’re fortunate that things happened as they did, although it sounds callous to say so.”
“Indeed, but I understand what you mean. The thing that bothers me in all of this is their response to the proposed monopoly. I expected them to react, yes, because Orin has always struggled financially. Their location and lack of specialized products have cost them dearly when it comes to economic growth. But attacking a guild that has a direct impact on their markets is nigh akin to financial suicide. Blackstone alone has the power to shut down a third of the market in Orin. In fact, if Darrens doesn’t do just that after hearing what happened to his daughter, I’ll be highly surprised.”
Siobhan knew with grim certainty that Darrens would likely do just that. He was a fair man in many respects, but he was a ruthless one and everyone understood that crossing him would cost you dearly. The nameless guild of Orin was a fool to attack Lirah.
“I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t know what the consequences would be,” Markl stated slowly, perplexed. “No matter how high your rate of success is likely to be, isn’t it foolhardy to not expect repercussions?”
“And that’s what is bothering me,” his father agreed, mouth pursed. “In their shoes, I wouldn’t be trying to end the monopoly, I’d be fighting to join it. For them, this is a golden opportunity that comes along once in a lifetime. Or once in every several lifetimes. They need a boost of some sort to help their economy, and this trade agreement would have been the perfect stimulus. So why try to sabotage it?”
Siobhan stared at him in stunned silence for a moment. She hadn’t even considered that, but he was right. Why wouldn’t Orin try to join in? As much as the agreement would have hurt them, it would have done worlds of good, too, if they’d been a part of it. “Were they panicking? Unable to think clearly?”
“Perhaps,” Hammon allowed, although his tone said he didn’t think that was the case. “But I’m inclined to think that there is something else, some other part of this puzzle that we are not seeing. I believe that Coravine is up to something, something that they’ve kept from the eyes of the world, that would influence them to attack first instead of bargaining.”
“What?” Markl demanded.
“I have no idea,” Hammon admitted. “But it is imperative that we find out, and soon, otherwise I think this whole situation will quickly degenerate.”
ӜӜӜ
That wasn’t the end of the conversation, and with Lirah’s people settled, her own guild came and joined them in the common room. But as much as they discussed, and offered theories, none of them felt they had really arrived at an answer. After dinner, they unanimously went to bed rather than pick up the debate again.
Siobhan’s guild had been given a set of rooms that was near Blackstone’s, theirs being on the opposite end of the common room. Her own room, shared with Sylvie, was a mirror image of every other room in this wing. She couldn’t seem to relax in it, as nice as it was, but instead found herself tossing and turning in the bed.
Giving up, she threw back the covers and retreated to the miniature garden that she could see from her window.
No one else was awake, and nothing stirred. She sat on the edge of the porch, in nothing but loose pants and an oversized shirt, letting her bare feet dangle in the shallow fish pond. The cool water felt good to her aching feet. She’d been on them most of the day and her body told her in detail about how it didn’t appreciate that.
As tired as she was physically, her mind wouldn’t let her rest and insisted on going over everything said today. She’d hoped that the stillness of this moonlit garden would soothe her and her thoughts would settle, but after sitting here for several minutes, that wish proved to be in vain.
Something didn’t feel right about this.
Siobhan couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was missing something. Something vital, at that. The reasons and theories of this afternoon made sense, certainly, but she felt that there should be something more to this. Something…with a deeper significance that would drive a guild to such desperate lengths. And it was desperate—picking a fight with three of the major guilds on two continents that could directly affect trade with all of Orin couldn’t be described as anything else. In fact, Siobhan labeled it as the plan of a madman.
But what? What could possibly be so important that it would justify hiring assassins and making enemies of major guilds?
The hallway door softly opened and closed behind her, Wolf’s familiar heavy tread making the floorboards vibrate slightly. With a muted grunt, he sat down with legs on either side of her, then put both arms around her waist, chin resting on top of her head.
Despite her heavy thoughts, she couldn’t help but smile. He only did this when he was certain no one was watching, as if e
mbarrassed to be caught doing anything so sentimental, but she loved it when he did. Siobhan felt the weight of her duties very strongly. She had from the very first day of being guildmaster. Sometimes, like now, the weight became almost crushing. Her decisions, good or bad, directly influenced the lives around her. A careless or poorly thought-out command could cost her a friend. Thinking like this made her job hard to bear sometimes.
But whenever she hit a low point, Wolf always seemed to appear in that moment, and he would wrap her up in his arms like this. For just a few selfish moments, she leaned against his strength and let him support her completely. Siobhan let her eyes fall closed as she entrusted her body weight to him. She took in a deep breath, letting the scent of him fill her head, mixed in with the cool night air. Then she took another, and when she opened her eyes, she felt strong enough to face the world again.
"Something’s not adding up,” Wolf murmured to her lowly. “It’s troubling you.”
“And you,” she acknowledged. “If trade monopolies were really what scared them into action, then why do it this way? It doesn’t make sense. I mean, even if the plan succeeded, it would only be short term. In the long run, Blackstone and Iron Dragain would have figured out the truth. When they did, Orin would be in an even worse situation, as I can’t imagine that either guild wouldn’t exact revenge.”
He grunted agreement. “Delaying tactics, that’s what this feels like to me.”
She couldn’t help but think the same. “But delaying for what?”
“Wish I knew. This I can tell you—it has to be strong enough, somehow, to turn the tides. Orin has to think it’ll give ‘em an upper hand so no other guild can harm ‘em.”
Yes, it was that unquantified potential for power that made the marrow in her bones tremble. She cuddled in a little harder and tried not to think about it.
“Siobhan, I have to ask, what do you intend to do with Rune?”
She blinked at this question, coming from nowhere. “Do with him? Am I supposed to do something with him?”
Deepwoods (Book 1) Page 19
