by Brian Keller
He carefully made his way along the halls, avoiding a few pairs of soldiers who were still going room-to-room looking for anyone that remained. He stopped briefly in the kitchen to stock up on food for the next few days and then proceeded to the smithy. Cooper figured if anyone had fought and managed to survive, it would be Master Loril. The quartermaster’s shop was in complete disarray. Much of the clothing had been piled in the center of the room and set alight. By this time it was mostly a pile of smoldering embers and ash. Cooper could hear quite a bit of noise coming from the direction of the Scenarios classroom. Cooper wondered whether the invaders would go to the effort of moving the contents of that room, or simply destroy everything. He knew he couldn’t risk spending much more time searching. There were still several soldiers nearby, walking up and down the halls. The smoke, thick from all the burned clothing and smoldering boots, was the only thing that made him feel concealed. He slipped through the door that connected the shop to the forge. Near the forge, things seemed to be less molested, probably since no one wanted to go to the effort of knocking down the small stacks of ingots. Cooper saw several of the leather aprons and gloves had been thrown into the coals. A few smoldering scraps still rested on the surface. He glanced over to where he had left his apron and gloves and saw that they were still there, under the bench, but his apron had been rolled into a bundle. Ignoring everything else for a moment he bolted over to the bundle and hefted it. There was undoubtedly something inside it. Without hesitation he secured it in his pack and decided he’d pressed his luck enough and it was time to go. He heard the sounds of several booted feet coming down the hall between him and the tunnel he’d used to enter. He knew of another way out but didn’t feel too comfortable using the shaft between the Arena and the roof. It was likely that a few soldiers occupied the roof and anyone exiting through that hidden hatch would be noticed. He picked up a leather apron and sprinted through the door into the quartermaster’s shop. He tossed his pack onto the floor near the ash pile an threw several handfuls of cooled ash onto it, then placed the apron on the floor and swept coals and ashes on it. He slid under the apron and pulled his pack up behind him and waited. He heard a soldier talking as the muffled footsteps drew near, passed, and then faded as they went toward the Scenarios classroom. He could hear one soldier’s voice, “You’ve gotta see this. There’s enough stuff here to furnish a dozen homes. And it’s all top notch stuff. Surely we can sell off a bunch of it before some bean counter comes in and starts making a note of all of it.” Cooper was thinking, “And they call us “thieves”…” Once Cooper could no longer hear voices or bootsteps he emerged from under the apron, blew the ash from his nostrils and crept briskly back out the way he’d entered. He stopped in the Potter’s shop long enough to unpack his apron to inspect the bundle. Cooper’s breath caught in his throat, the first thing he noticed was that the bundle contained a newly-forged matching sister to his own dagger with the upswept handguards. There was also a small wooden box. Cooper opened it and was amazed at what he saw. There were matching halves of casting dies. He recognized the mirror images and knew the dies were designed to make a token of his own design. Cooper felt his throat tighten as he realized that Tokens were reserved for Adept and Master Assassins, but Master Loril had already finished making his. As he took the dies out of the box he noticed a scrap of parchment lying in the bottom. Cooper took it out and held it up in a patch of light that was streaming in through a gap of one of the boarded-up windows. On one side was written ten words which comprised three names:
Master Vorni
Royal Spymaster Yoren Aporigh
Lord General Hennit Arkady
Cooper put everything back into his pack, “Well, this gives me a place to start.”
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