Skulduggery 10: Building a Criminal Empire

by Logan Jacobs

  Every single soldier stepped forward to volunteer, so I just nodded at twelve of them right in front of me, and the rest stepped back into formation. I had one of them run and grab chains and padlocks, and when he returned to us, I told my other soldiers to take the priest with us. Four of them hustled forward to force the day elf to march, and then they all followed me without question toward the garrison gate.

  Since I wasn’t sure exactly what we would find at the temple, I had Penny, Ava, Dar, and Clodia come with me and the twelve Elite soldiers. I had Clodia show me the way to the temple, but when we were still one street away from it, I decided to go ahead and interrogate the priest. I didn’t want him to draw strength from any priests still inside the temple, and I sure as hell didn’t want their magic to interfere with my interrogation.

  And I planned for his execution to be swift enough that no one would be able to stop it.

  In the middle of the street before we reached the temple, I stopped and whirled back around to face the sniveling priest.

  “I’m going to ask you a few questions,” I said, “and the more honest you are, the better off you’ll be.”

  Clodia made a spark of blue fire dance between her fingers, and I appreciated her flair for the dramatic.

  “C-clodia?” the priest stuttered. “But you’re a g-guild master! You’re a leader of our race!”

  “Ehhhhh, I was,” the night elf snickered, “but I’m something rather more spectacular than that now. I’m part of something new, you see, and if you had been smart, you could have been, too.”

  “It’s a little late for that now,” Ava muttered.

  “Tell me about the temple,” I said.

  “What do you want to know?” the priest sniffled.

  “How many of you are in there?” I demanded. “How many of you are still alive? You clearly didn’t drink the wine this morning, so how many others didn’t?”

  “Wh-what?” the day elf asked. “Slow down, I can’t--”

  “Do not try to tell the king what to do,” Ava hissed and then suddenly had a dagger pressed to the man’s throat before I even saw her move.

  “Maybe you should ask him one question at a time, so his pea-sized brain can handle it,” Penny said.

  “How many priests and priestesses are at the Blood City temple?” I growled.

  “Two dozen,” the priest said and then gulped when Ava pressed the dagger harder against his neck. “B-but only about seven of us are left!”

  “So everyone else drank the wine?” I asked. “And there’s only six left inside plus you?”

  “Y-yes,” the day elf stammered. “I swear on the sun and moon!”

  “Why didn’t you drink the wine?” Clodia asked.

  “We were in charge of blessing it,” the priest said, “so we were supposed to let everyone else take a sip first, but then…”

  “I’ve heard enough,” I said. “Let’s see if your story matches up with what your little friends at the temple have to say.”

  I nodded at the Elite soldiers, and they pushed the day elf priest forward again until we rounded the corner and came into sight of the temple up ahead.

  The temple in the Blood City wasn’t nearly as impressive or beautiful as the temple in my own home city. Then again, I knew how many things the elves had stolen from the humans, so I had a feeling that the temple back home might have originally been built by human craftsmen, so as much as they wanted to, the elves had never been able to imitate it.

  The Blood City temple stood at the end of a wide road, and instead of the sheer glass that was used in my city, this temple was built from the same marble that the elves used for damn near everything. There were columns on the front porch of the temple, steps that led up to the main doors, and haf only one other way in and out of the rectangular building.

  I took Ava and Clodia up to the front door with me, glanced behind me to make sure the Elite were ready just in case, and then knocked politely.

  “You don’t want to try a slightly more direct way?” Clodia asked.

  “There may not be any need to,” I said with a shrug. “If we can take the easy way out, it’ll save us some blood and some time.”

  “You will have to break down the doors with magic if you want us to come out!” an elven woman’s voice called from inside the temple. “We have seen you human savages from the windows, and we will not open the door for you!”

  “You know you’ll starve eventually!” I called back.

  “It will be a great honor to starve for the sake of our empire,” the elven priestess answered, “and it will be better to starve than to open our sanctified doors to a human bastard who calls himself a king.”

  “You know we’ve got your friend out here,” I said through the door. “He’s been telling us a lot of interesting information about all of you.”

  “Like how soon your temple will reek of rotten corpses,” Ava said. “Seventeen bodies, right?”

  “If you mean seventeen murder victims, yes,” the priestess wailed. “We only sent out the priest to see if it was safe, but--”

  “Clearly, it’s not,” I cut her off. “I want you all to watch very carefully from your windows because I’m about to show you what will happen if you try to escape.”

  “Wait, don’t you want to break in?” the elven priestess asked.

  “You’ve used magic on the door, so I’m not going to waste my energy,” I said. “Instead, I just want you to watch.”

  Without a second’s hesitation, I walked right back down the front steps, unsheathed my sword, and then sliced the sniveling priest’s head completely off his body. His pale head hit the ground first and rolled away in a stream of blue blood, but his body just stood upright for a few seconds, as if it couldn’t quite believe that it no longer had a head.

  When the body finally toppled to the ground to join the day elf’s head, I heard little shrieks from inside the temple, and I figured that I had made my point.

  “You will pay for this!” the elven priestess screeched. “The elves will come back doubly strong, and they will make you pay.”

  “But not today,” I said with a smirk.

  “What do we do now?” Penny murmured.

  “We let them starve,” I said, “unless they come out and try to cause a problem, and then we kill them. Their magic will keep us out, but I’d like to use a little magic of our own to keep them in, too. So Clodia, you’re up.”

  “I can keep them in for a while, yes,” the night elf replied, “especially if I come back to reinforce my magic every so often.”

  “Good, then we’ll reinforce the doors the human way first, and then the magic way,” I said.

  I ordered the Elite soldiers to lock both the front and back doors of the temple with the chains and padlocks that we had brought, and then I ordered the dozen Elite soldiers to guard the place and send me word at the first sign of any trouble from inside. Sure, we could have busted past their magic wards if we worked at it long enough, and eventually we could have killed everyone inside, but if the priestesses wanted to starve themselves instead of fight, then I was perfectly content not to waste any of my soldiers’ lives.

  After the guards were posted and the chains on the doors were in place, Clodia grasped the padlock on the front door and held it until the metal started to glow blue. Flames sparked in every direction until the chains and padlock seemed to be on fire, and even when Clodia took her hands away, the flames continued to spark.

  “It won’t last forever, but it will keep them from opening the doors for a little bit of time,” the night elf said.

  “Go ahead and do the same thing at the back door, too,” I said. “The harder we make it for them to come out, the better.”

  “Even if they did manage to break out, six isn’t too bad,” Ava said. “It’s a lot better than two dozen, anyway.”

  “That’s fair,” I said. “If we find a way inside before they starve themselves to death, that’s fine, but it’s also fine if we don’t. At l
east that way, we wouldn’t have to worry about any magic they might be able to use against us.”

  “They should be worried that you’ll use it right back against them,” Dar said.

  “That’s also true,” I laughed, “but that might just be a fun little surprise that they’ll get to find out later.”

  Once Clodia had finished her magic at both temple doors, she returned to us and nodded.

  “It’s done,” the night elf announced.

  I gave a final reassuring word to the Elite soldiers that I had posted as guards at the temple, and then I started to move back through the streets to return to the garrison. There was a lot to do, so I needed to get my priorities in order, so we could keep our hard-won victory. And that meant I definitely needed to get back to the Capital as soon as possible.

  “Clodia, I want you to stay here and continue to monitor the temple,” I said. “If there’s any signs of trouble, I want you to take care of it, and I want you to reinforce your magic ward on the doors whenever you need to.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Clodia replied.

  “Ava, I want you to stay here, too,” I said. “You should start to train our troops on how to fight against cavalry, so you can start to train them about the bow and anything else you need.”

  “I will make them ready as soon as I can,” the blonde assassin said.

  “And Dar, I want you to stay here and help Leif and Ava with whatever they need,” I told my halfling friend. “You’ll need to place a lot of weapons orders, so we can equip our soldiers with pikes and bows, and you’ll also have to move back and forth between the Blood City and the City of Slaves. The commanders there need to know what’s going on, too.”

  “I’ll make sure we have weapons and that everyone is on the same page,” Dar said. “You just take care of things in the Capital, and we’ll take care of things here until you get back.”

  I turned to Penny, and I saw that the beautiful redhead looked impatient to hear my task for her, but she also looked worried that it might take her away from my side.

  “Don’t worry,” I snickered. “You’re coming with me, Penny.”

  “Oh!” the pixie thief said. “I mean, whatever you say, Wade.”

  “We’ll be back as soon as we can,” I told the others. “I just need to get word to Golierian that we need to speak to him, and I need to check on everything back home. Then we can start to spread the word about how to reinforce the city and prepare for an attack from the wilderness forts.”

  “We’ll be here when you get back,” Dar said. “Just take care of yourself, okay? You, too, Penny.”

  “Alright, you big softie,” the redhead teased. “We’ll be just fine.”

  After I did a final check-in with Leif that everything was going well enough here for me to leave, I took Penny back to the museum, so we could pass through the portal into the stone chamber below the catacombs. When we came out into the stone chamber, I took a deep breath and allowed myself to enjoy the silence underneath the catacombs for a moment.

  It had already been one hell of a day, and it was only the first day of the revolution.

  Still, no one said it would be easy, so we would just have to keep pushing in order to keep what we had gained. It was a little bit of a complication that Tevian had escaped and was probably trying to unite all the elven troops scattered across the empire at the wilderness forts, but we had a little bit of time before we had to worry about that. And hopefully, it would be just enough time for us to prepare ourselves.

  “Wade, are you okay?” Penny murmured when we reached the door. “You’re really quiet.”

  “Yeah, I’m alright,” I said. “I’m just thinking about everything that we need to do, and it’s… well, it’s a lot.”

  “The wilderness forts were a surprise,” Penny agreed. “Plus, I know we don’t have a lot of time to crush them before they unite or at least get organized enough to attack us.”

  “I’ll feel better once we talk to Cimarra and find out what’s going on with the rest of the empire,” I said. “We know that three cities already belong to us, right?”

  “Blood City, the City of Slaves, and the Capital,” the green-eyed thief said.

  “Exactly,” I said, “so that just leaves seven cities that we’re not sure about yet.”

  “And then, once we find out about them, the only question left is whether or not we can keep control of them,” Penny said. “And how fast Tevian is able to raise the alarm at the forts.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Once the wilderness forts get word of what’s happened, they’ll organize themselves to march on all the cities to try to take them back.”

  “How long do you think it’ll take them to figure out that there’s been a revolution?” the redhead asked.

  “They seem to be pretty remote, at least from what I could see on the map,” I replied, “so we might have a week before they know anything is wrong. Maybe more, maybe less.”

  “Well, maybe they won’t all attack all the cities at once,” Penny said. “They may wait and organize all together, maybe even under Tevian.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” I said, “and if there’s even just two or three thousand soldiers at each fort, we could easily be fucked.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help, my king?” the sentient door suddenly rumbled.

  “Just keep doing exactly what you’ve been doing,” I said. “Help my people pass in and out of these portals as quickly as we need to, so we can easily move between cities.”

  “Of course,” the door replied, “and if anyone who does not belong to you tries to come through, I will keep them out.”

  “Perfect,” I said with a smile. “You’re a real lifesaver.”

  “And is there anything that I can do to help, my king?” Penny asked as she slipped her hand into mine.

  “Just stay by my side,” I murmured and then bent down to kiss her. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

  “I know,” the pixie thief said with a toss of her bright-red hair. “Now come on, we better check in with Cim and see if she’s heard from the rest of our forces in the empire yet.”

  “Fair enough,” I laughed, and then I followed her out of the stone chamber and up through the catacombs.

  When we came up from the sewers and reached the surface of our hometown, the Capital looked like a different fucking city. First of all, there wasn’t a single elf in sight, since they were all locked up in the jails until the revolution was over. And since there were no elves around, everyone that we passed just seemed so… relaxed.

  Of course, as soon as they spotted me in my full armor with a battle-sword at my side, a shield with the human emblem on my arm, and a king’s crown on my head, they all got a little less relaxed and a little more nervous. I wasn’t sure if it was the crown or the sword, or maybe it was just all the elven blood that now stained my shield and armor, but all the people that we passed curtseyed or bowed to acknowledge me.

  I just nodded and smiled as we passed one human after another through the human district, and Penny’s chin stuck a little higher and higher up into the air as we moved toward the Entertainment District.

  “If you stick your chin up any higher, it might get stuck like that,” I teased.

  “I can’t help it,” the beautiful redhead said. “I’m proud to be seen on your arm, and can you blame me?”

  “I guess not,” I laughed.

  When we passed Twila’s dancehall in the Entertainment District, Ruby informed me that Ashlin was asleep in the back, but that Twila and Cimarra were still at Osman’s bakery, so we headed there next.

  It was a strange feeling to walk through the streets and not worry that some elven guard might be about to put an arrow into my back just because they didn’t like the way I walked or talked. But the watchtowers in the Capital were all ours now, just like the garrison in the halfling district and just like every single district in the city.

  For years when I first c
ame to the Capital, I had tried to blend in as much as possible so I wouldn’t draw any extra attention to myself, since extra attention from the elves almost always resulted in death. But now as Penny and I walked through the halfling district, I held my head up high and felt a swell of pride inside my chest.

  It wasn’t just that I could walk the streets without fear for myself. It was that now, everyone could, whether they were human or another race. And that was how it always would be from here on out… just as long as we were able to keep the gains that we had made.

  When we entered Osman’s bakery, the dining area was completely empty except for one table. Cimarra, Twila, Osman, Marver, and Skam were all seated around one round table, and from the looks of it, they had just enjoyed a whole meal, complete with coffee, thanks to Osman and Marver.

  As soon as we stepped inside, they all turned to look at us. Twila squealed with delight, Cimarra pushed the entire table away from her, and they all scrambled over each other to come greet me.

  “Oh, Wade!” Cimarra said when she reached me first.

  “Fuck, it’s good to see you,” Twila murmured as she pressed herself up agaisnt me.

  I wrapped my arms around both women, and Penny squirmed in a little tighter so she could be part of our embrace, too. I knew that Leif had made sure they were protected when he conquered the Capital for me, but it was still a goddamn relief to see them all well and safe in person.

  When my women finally released me, I looked over at Osman, Marver, and Skam, only to see that the tattooed dwarf had tears in his eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand to try to hide them, but it was already too late.

  “Do you want a hug, too?” I grinned.

  “Ach, I don’t want to hear it,” Skam grunted, but he barreled toward me and wrapped me up into a bear hug for a second anyway. “I can’t fookin’ help that it’s good to see ya, can I?”

  “I appreciate that, my friend,” I said, “and Osman, I hate to bother you when it looks like you’ve just finished making a meal, but--”

  “You don’t even need to ask, my king,” the djinn interrupted. “For you, I could make a thousand meals and never grow tired. It’s good to see you well.”