by Damien Lake
“So Jenni…”
Kerwin shrugged. “After they had been settled with his supplier for some time, they suddenly came back to his shop. They didn’t say much, only wanted to see everything he had that might be useful for an assassination. Best guess is that was right after the attack on the chapter house. They must have known they needed a new plan and wanted to study their available resources. Jenni gave them the bracelet and hasn’t seen them since.”
“Gave it to them, huh? Didn’t sell it to them?”
“That’s what he said. Why?”
“Nothing. He’s not quite as dumb as he looks.”
“You see what happened though, don’t you? The phosphorus alone wouldn’t have led us to them through Jenni. It’s only the fact that they came back and got their bracelet from him that formed the connection we stumbled on.”
“Yeah, I see. So we were completely wrong on the matter of the phosphorus, but following the alchemy shops brought us through in the end anyway.”
“An impressive stretch of luck,” Kerwin agreed.
Dietrik passed through the curtain into the darkened shop. “I think we’ve drained this blighter of anything useful he might say. Any thoughts on what the next step might be?”
“You know where this phosphorus refinery is?”
“Indeed,” Dietrik replied. “It lies across the river. On foot, it would take us near on two candlemarks once we exit the city proper.”
Kerwin added, “And I don’t feature attacking an unknown enemy stronghold in the dark until I get a good look at it in the daylight.”
“Attack? We don’t know how many enemies there are out there.”
“Our friend says only half a dozen thieves from Spirratta arrived in his shop,” Dietrik mentioned with a thumb gesturing over his shoulder. “I imagine most of the local ruffians prefer to stay in the city. Since the woman assassin is assuredly one of the Spirrattans, and we must have taken down one or two others during the ruckus in the alleys, then we’re likely looking at an even match.”
“I don’t know,” Marik wavered. “Let’s see what Landon thinks.”
In the back room he found Jenni still sprawled on the floor in the night robe he had worn to bed before they interrupted his sleep. He still huffed like a horse fresh off Tourney Town’s racing track, his massive flesh billowing in great heaves of inhalation.
Landon leaned against a wall, keeping an eye on the slug. When asked, he offered the opinion, “I believe the last course of action they will expect from us would be frontal assault. If we catch them off guard, we may be able to put an end to this affair.”
“Then,” Marik decided, glad the experienced veteran was there to guide him, “I guess we go tomorrow. Tonight’s no good. But what about him?” He pointed at Jenni.
Landon smiled grimily at the fat man huffing on the floor. “Oh, he and I have reached a meeting of minds. He will keep his silence.”
With little left to accomplish at Jenni’s shop, they departed to return to the Standing Spell, all the while Marik wondering how Landon had convinced the man to stay away from the dark guilds.
He also felt a mild weight leave his shoulders, a burden he had not consciously been aware of until he felt its departure. Though loath to admit so, a faint worry about Ilona had crept over his heart. Marik had shrugged off her choice of disguise as a thief, despite it clearly striking Dietrik as portentous. Prudence on her part, that was all, and the fact that professional thieves were at the heart of their troubles proved nothing except that coincidences happened all the time.
But then she took an unnatural interest in his mage powers. That avid expression he glimpsed during those displays had begun to make him worry over what lay at the heart of her interest. Did she study him to see how powerful his magic might be, so as to better assess the challenge of killing Hilliard Garroway?
Foolish thoughts, he knew, yet insidious and persistent. With Jenni proving once and for all that the Spell had no connection to the assassination attempt, Marik felt the shadow of doubt evaporate from his being.
At the Standing Spell they entered to find Hilliard in full swing. Marik, having expected to find the youth in any possible number of situations other than this, discovered that worms of jealously could be born on the instant.
In a side parlor furnished with low couches, stuffed chairs and tea tables, the future baron of Stonescape held court. Vashti sat regally in a long emerald-green dress that accented her olive skin tone, as striking as any of the ladies Marik had seen in the palace gardens. She held a steaming teacup while watching the young man with genuine interest, as opposed to courteous attention accorded for politeness’ sake. Ilona claimed the next chair over, dressed in the captivating ensemble she had worn to the Sestion mansion, also taking interest in the proceedings, but she was amused more by the other women in the room than by Hilliard.
Marik recognized each woman present. He knew none of their names other than Rosa and Corissa. Only three others had joined the madam in entertaining the young noble, making for a total of seven beautiful ladies bending their attention on Hilliard. The four women who worked as entertainers of the gentry had chosen sultry, sensual garb, where the three who ran the business were reserved. Corissa in particular lounged as languidly as a cat, full length across a fuzzy couch, artfully situated so that as much of her bosoms escaped the low neckline as possible without actually falling free.
Of which Hilliard appeared completely oblivious. Marik instantly recognized the topic he discoursed on as he stood within the ring of feminine onlookers. Not the tournament, as might have been expected, or his value as a member of the nobility. His passionate delivery centered on Duke Tilus of Spirratta, and on how true men never wavered from their ideals.
That he could speak coherently within the wash of sweetly perfumed fragrance and beautiful visions annoyed Marik severely. He watched the youth continue for a moment, his brain apparently never hitching for an instant while he spoke in Ilona’s presence. Marik knew his irritation must have flashed across his face because Ilona’s half-amused smirk intensified.
Hilliard noticed their arrival by the shift in the women’s gazes. He turned to meet them, and Marik observed how smoothly his movements were executed. Irritation unlike any he had ever felt toward the younger man swelled within Marik, making him comment in a waspish tone, “I see you’ve spent a pleasant evening while we skulked through the shadows.”
The noble took the comment at face value, unaware of the acid gilding Marik’s words. “In fact I have been engaging in several intellectual debates with the Lady Vashti. Fascinating enough that we attracted several others who took an interest in our points of view.”
“Yes, I’m sure your point is of particular interest to these…ladies.”
Hilliard took no further notice of that than of the harsh tone, though Marik peripherally noticed Dietrik raising his eyebrows in surprise. This registered only partially with Marik since he also noticed Ilona’s eyes narrowing like a wolf’s. Vashti twinkled silent humor from her own dark brown orbs.
“I must apologize,” Hilliard directed to the madam, oblivious to the new tension passing behind his back. “I believe the time has come to take my leave. I know not what Marik and the others have learned, but I am sure we must return to the confines of our inn.” He returned his questioning gaze to Marik. “Yes?”
“Yeah,” Marik grunted. Ilona seemed less angry as much as hoping to peel him apart with her gaze alone, intent on examining his inner soul. Leaving before she could rescind her offer to come see her later sounded like an excellent idea. “Come on then. Enough fun for one night.”
He placed a hand flat against Hilliard’s back and steered him into the entranceway, closed for the night to the normal clientele. Once beyond the women’s hearing, Hilliard greatly surprised Marik by slumping like a weary man after a hard day’s labor. “Thank all the Twelve,” he murmured. “I was nearly finished in there.”
“Finished? What finished?” Marik glan
ced back sharply, wondering if a new assassin had wormed her way into the ranks of the Standing Spell’s courtesans.
“After all the evening, I nearly exhausted my entire repertoire over which I command easy fluency.” A haunted gaze met his bodyguard’s. “I fear I was becoming increasingly distracted and would soon begin to behave in a most ungentlemanly manner.”
“Ungentlemanly?” Marik reexamined the scene in which he’d found Hilliard. In this light, he could see that the young man’s fervent stare stemmed as much from his ridged refusal to allow his eyes to wander over such enticements as Corissa’s cleavage as from his heartfelt discourse. He felt the ire at his charge melt away. “Well, Hilliard, I don’t think they would have minded you taking a closer look at them.”
Hilliard stiffened his back. “Such a crude act in the house of our kind hostess would reach far beyond rudeness!” He shook his head.
Marik let the issue die, deciding that pointing out that little else ever occurred behind these walls, and by bluebloods holding rank far above his future station no less, would serve no purpose. Hilliard surely knew the truth of that already, but deep in his mind a distinction had been drawn between the realities of the domicile and the notion that Vashti offered him a refuge during his travails. A lady in his mind, and never a madam, she must be accorded the respect he would give due to his own mother.
A hint of a smile broke through his dour expression. Marik looked for the others, seeing Landon mere feet behind him. Kerwin, resurrecting all the previous annoyance Marik had only moments before throttled into submission, entered the Spell’s foyer in conversation with Ilona.
Apparently the efficient design of the Spell’s rooms compacted around the hallways impressed the gambler. He took advantage of the opportunity to ask Ilona about the original designer. Though Kerwin always stole every opening he saw to ask locals about respected architects in Thoenar, it grated on Marik how Ilona responded with unabashed interested in his conversation. Where had the caustic ire he was so familiar with vanished to?
Before he could react to Kerwin’s trespass, Hilliard stepped through the doorway into the darkened street beyond. Marik followed with visions of what might transpire with their charge alone in the city’s open roadways. The others joined him moments later. Ilona locked the door without so much as a nod of farewell. He threw an irritated glance at Kerwin, who missed seeing it through the gloom.
Marik spent the entire walk back to the Swan’s Down in a futile attempt to concentrate on the discussion about what to do next, trying to shake the distraction of Ilona from his mind.
Chapter 20
“I’d say this could grow ugly in the legendary blink of an eye.”
Marik agreed with Dietrik. “If we only knew where Sloan and Kineta’s groups were…damn!”
“Sloan would get that quirk on his face and come in a heartbeat,” Kerwin stated. “But I doubt she would leave her charge to come help us with our troubles.”
“There is little to be gained by wishing for beef when all one has is fowl,” Landon observed. “Marik, I think most of these people will leave by nightfall. Whoever is left afterward should either prove to be a handful of night watchmen or the ones we seek.”
Marik nodded. “I’ll mark them all. You three study what you can see and I’ll describe what I can of the rest.”
Shielded from the refinery workers’ view by an oak tree copse, the four mercenaries gazed at their objective. They had hoped to find a hill overlooking the refinery. This slight rise provided the only elevation near at hand.
They had departed Thoenar in the early noontime candlemarks, arriving at the refinery three marks before sunset. In his naivete, Marik had expected an open yard where a family labored at their business like the wagon makers near the One Soul’s chapter house, or a warehouse enclosing a dozen workers such as Minta ran in Tattersfield. Instead they found no less than nine buildings, all dirty brick and shuttered windows. No two buildings matched each other in size or shape. Several were long and narrow, others were squarish while one was a two story, squat cylinder. Looming over all from the northernmost perimeter rose a fifty foot brick tower.
The purpose behind most buildings remained a mystery. On the other hand, one less mystery was why the refinery had been relegated to Thoenar’s outer reaches. Not even the sickening stench wafting from the renderer a quarter-mile away, where men stirred massive vats with long oars while masking their faces with heavily perfumed cloth, could completely overpower the chemical fumes. Rotten-egg sulfur, the acrid bite of ammonia familiar from the army latrine trenches, and several other unidentifiable odors assailed their nostrils.
Though six miles distant from the city walls, Marik assumed the housing on Thoenar’s westernmost fringes must fetch low prices. If the wind blew to the east, the populace living in those districts must awaken to a pestilence of ill smells. Healers must make regular visits to those quarters.
Yet it was more than the stench alone that made him believe this place refined pestilence. Galemar’s usually vibrant greenery had revolted. Barren ground surrounded all the businesses, not merely the refinery. Hard-packed earth was stained unhealthy colors in many places. Ragged patches of struggling grass wilted in brown desiccation. The summer’s heat could not be blamed for the poisoned wastes Marik saw with his eyes and felt with his mage senses. These evil smelling manufactories leached the life from the soil.
In a place where he would have expected no humans could remain long, Marik instead found a teeming throng of workers. Throughout the refinery, easily two-hundred backs labored. Marik studied them under his magesight while the small party sheltered within the trees whose leaves had turned a sickly yellow far too soon in the season.
He hoped Landon, with his veteran’s experience, had the right of it. If the thieves from Spirratta were sheltering at the refinery, they could be any of the few hundred auras moving about. They had no wish to assault an innocent worker whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Marik spent the next candlemarks carefully describing the land’s lay behind walls blocking the other three’s sight. He drifted above the buildings, floated along the paths, all the while speaking words he could not hear despite being their author. Every few minutes he would return his consciousness to his physical body in order to field questions or ask his own to make sure his friends had understood his descriptions.
When the day waned, the auras throughout the refinery lessened. Men returned home or angled north to cross the Pinedock, intent on wading the northern ford to visit Tourney Town after a hard day’s work. The number of roaming auras thinned to the point where Marik could make a rough count.
“Say about twenty left moving around the buildings,” he reported. “I see almost as many staying still.”
“All as a group or scattered?” Landon wanted to know.
“Three groups and a few solitaries,” Marik answered.
“Mark those three. If our thieves are hiding here, I doubt they wish it known by those who work there honestly.”
Kerwin gazed on his longtime friend. “You’re betting they’re holed up in a back room all day?”
“It seems likely. The owner may have ties to the dark guilds, but the workers must be honest men laboring for their wages. I doubt any know what mischief their employer has been about.”
“There go another four,” Marik told them, watching a small group of auras walk along the dirt road that would only become paved near the city’s edge.
They waited patiently for two marks, the sun far off behind the refinery, the cloudy summer sky glowing in burnished hues. Marik watched the auras steadily decrease in number until only one stationary group remained while five solitary auras moved about in the early evening darkness.
“I’d say the group should be our men,” Landon mused. “The others must be night guards.”
“They aren’t following any pattern,” Marik informed them in irritation. “Sometimes they walk around, and at others they sit
still for long stretches.”
“Typical behavior for hired guardsmen,” Dietrik decided. “They have little in common with either soldiers or mercenaries. I rather doubt any of them have ever encountered a serious challenge while about their rounds, and never expect to.”
“Well, I don’t think anyone else feels like leaving.” Marik left them for a brief moment to drift closer, quickly inspecting the clustered auras. “I’d say they’re in an office. I see four of them and they all look to have swords.”
“Swords, do they?” Dietrik said thoughtfully. “I recall that first night in the alleys. Do you remember?”
“Hard to forget having to run for our skins through a pitch black maze,” Kerwin replied sarcastically.
Dietrik threw a pebble that struck the gambler on the forehead. “I was referring to the order of events. All the blighters in the initial ambush bore long knives, but while we fled, I remember the new arrivals running down the side alleys held swords.”
“Yeah,” Marik agreed. “In fact, wasn’t there a woman shouting at them?”
“Yes,” Landon affirmed. “I thought, at the time, that they were a local gang suffering from poor planning, but I see Dietrik’s mind. They were two groups working in coordination. The locals from Thoenar’s dark guilds and the Spirrattans sent to oversee the operation.”
“The Spirrattans must have sent genuine fighters,” Marik thought aloud. “They must have wanted to make sure the locals didn’t botch the job with sloppy cutthroats.”
“Which they seem to have done regardless,” Dietrik returned. “The first group leapt at us before the swordsmen arrived to direct the assault. And I’ll lay two to Kerwin’s five that the woman you heard is Hilliard’s would-be assassin.”
Kerwin grimaced. “No chance we’ll ever find that out for certain. Still, the numbers sound right. A half-dozen showed up at Jenni’s shop. We collared the woman, and Marik splattered a swordsman against the kitchen wall. Leaves one for each of us.”
