Deception: Rogues of the Red League, Book 1

by Blackburn, Briana

  Roland swallowed the bread and weighed his options. He could continue to groan and act like a child, as he’d been doing, and sink back into the fussy idiot he’d been in this room. Or, he could act like a man and speak to this woman who had nursed him like an individual. She was clearly smart, certainly witty, and there was a rough charm to her.

  Clearing his throat, he set the plate down beside him. “How are you liking ‘The Little Bear Prince’?” he asked.

  “I’m not reading it,” she answered, lazily flipping another page. “I’m just trying to avoid talking to you.” He was offended for all of two seconds before she looked up with a slow smile. “I’m kidding. I actually quite like it. It was one of my favorite books to read growing up.”

  “Who is your favorite character?”

  “Are you quizzing me?” she asked, closing the book and setting it on her knee. She put a finger to her lip and contemplated this, then said, “I like the Courtier Fox.”

  He snorted. “He’s a pompous idiot.”

  “Well, he’s certainly the most fun of the lot.”

  He stared at her in surprise. “He lights the entire castle on fire!”

  “It was just a bit of fun!” she cried, then laughed. “Besides, he thought it was all quite hilarious when it was over. You have to have a good sense of humor about these things.”

  “I can assure you, the prince did not think it was funny.”

  “Because he’s a dry old bear. Am I to presume you have the good authority of the Bear Prince, then, highness?”

  “You may call me, Roland,” he said. “And, in fact, I do.”

  “The Bear Prince is actually my least favorite character,” she admitted, standing from her chair and stretching.

  It pulled her robes taunt as she twisted to the side to flex her spine, and Roland’s mouth went a little dry following the sea of flowing black up her body.

  His attention climbed until he found her face, which had caught him with a smirk.

  He scowled. “The Bear Prince is a noble and fair leader.”

  “He’s an ass,” she replied.

  “He is not an ass!”

  “I’m not going to debate with you the pure assery of a prince who charges this way and that with his sword, accusing whoever crosses his path as the thief who stole his jewels.”

  “Which, of course, makes sense as it was the damn fox who stole them! Everyone knows he set the fire to cover it up!”

  “Oh, the sheer conspiracy of it all is intoxicating. Careful, wouldn’t want to be poisoned again, this time by your own volition.”

  “Your fox is a liar, a thief, and a cheat.”

  “Clearly, I have entered upon the wrong argument,” said Marius, who opened the door, a wide grin on his face. “Perhaps we should come back later, darling. Your uncle appears to be in the middle of a very important debate about a fox and a bear.”

  The dauphine, his niece Alexys, peered from past her father’s back. Her lip wobbling and eyes red-rimmed.

  Roland immediately forgot about the stupid fox and gave her a small smile. “Hello, little dolphin, I’m sorry to have given you a scare.”

  Her chin quivered and she tore around Marius to hurtle into her uncle’s arms, sobbing.

  Roland winced as his arms went around her. Over her silky blonde hair, he saw his brother move closer, mouth opening to scold Alexys, but Roland shook his head and his brother paused.

  “It’s only internal bruising, not bleeding as your physician told you,” said Tiana to Marius softly. “Can I give you some unsolicited advice, majesty?”

  In surprise and relief, he looked down at her. “You could say anything to me madam, and I’d be grateful.”

  “Your physician’s an idiot.”

  Marius looked at her, startled. Which was quite the way in which Roland felt about her.

  Alexys was quieting in his arms, her face turning sides from his neck, her cheek pressed to his chest. She had her little fingers knotted in the bottom of his hair.

  “Are you okay?” she whispered.

  “I think so,” he said, biting back a groan as one of her little knees went into the sore spot of his abdomen.

  “Is the librarian going to make you better?”

  “If she doesn’t kill me first,” he whispered, tickling her sides and earning a giggle. He kissed her on the crown of her head and said, “Happy Birthday, Alexys.”

  “I can recommend some other physicians who work in the Glitter who’ll be far better for the future and for the rest of his care. He’ll need to be watched. He was doused with Yai root and while there is an antidote for it, I’m afraid it is incredibly hard to come by and nearly impossible to make if the hand is inexperienced.”

  “Surely we can find some in this circumstance if it will ease his discomfort?”

  She pressed her lips together in a tight line. “If you could find it, which I doubt, majesty, you’d pay more than it’d be worth and the process of refining it to what you need would take longer than for the prince to merely get better on his own.”

  “Then why does he need a physician’s attention?”

  “I suspect it will be the only way he’ll stay in bed and eat properly.”

  Marius cast a sour look at his brother as if he already knew this. “So what he truly needs is a babysitter?”

  “Yes,” she said reluctantly. “But a physician or at the very least a nurse will be able to adequately supply him with the proper elixirs and tonics to take care of at least some of the discomfort.”

  “If that is all, would you not be the best person for such a task?” Marius asked pleasantly, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as if this were what he was thinking all along.

  “With all due respect, majesty, I am an Apprentice Librarian, frankly it is not what my job entails and—”

  “Surely the books can wait, I don’t believe they’re going anywhere anytime soon. Not unless you’ve discovered they have legs they’ve haven’t been using and no one has told me.”

  “Majesty—”

  “It’s settled!” said Marius. Alexys jumped a bit as her father clapped his hands. “I will notify Phineas at once. In the meantime, I will get Nikolas to get a room together nearby, so you can be on hand should the need arise.”

  Roland tried to interject. “It’s unnecessary, Marius. I will be fine to go back to work in the morning. We have new recruits coming in for training and I can’t have a woman tailing me while I’m trying to—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Splendid!” said Marius. “Come, Alexys, we should get you ready for supper. Your uncle needs to rest and we need to eat a very large cake, which he gets none of.”

  The dauphine reluctantly climbed out of her uncle’s arms and went to her father, though not before she rushed back and pecked him on the cheek. Next, she went up to Tiana and gave her the very best curtsey she could muster.

  Tiana looked a bit flustered by the seven—now eight—year old princess bowed to her.

  “Thank you for caring for my uncle, madame,” she said quietly.

  “Uh, of course,” said Tiana.

  Alexys gave her a shy smile before scurrying to her father’s side. Together, the pair of them vanished, Alexys already talking about how pretty Tiana’s hair was. Could her hair be red like that, she wondered at her father. Whose answer Roland couldn’t quite make out, as the door to his chambers shut.

  Tiana stared after them, her brows pushed together, wrinkling her forehead. She looked as if she were trying to figure something quite puzzling out.

  Roland cleared his throat, gaining her attention back after a moment.

  “You can sleep in your own quarters,” he assured her, as she moved for her kit and began taking out herbs in silence. “You’ll have to tend to me every once and a while, but I’ll try and not let it interfere with your duties in the library.”

  “Because you don’t want a woman trailing behind you?” she asked casually. It took him a moment to realize she wa
s angry, and not even at Marius; at him!

  “I was trying to be helpful,” he growled. “When my brother gets an idea in his head, it is hard to persuade him of anything else.”

  “I wouldn’t want to distract you from your duties,” she said airily.

  “And you would! And my men. I don’t need a beautiful woman sauntering about, bantering with them when I’m trying to whip new recruits into shape!”

  She cast a glance sideways at him. Mouth twitching. “A beautiful woman, eh?”

  “You are ridiculous.”

  “Captain, are you flirting with your babysitter? How inappropriate.”

  He scowled at her. “I can replace you if I bother him enough.”

  “Oh, but then you’d just have some fat, lazy physician following you everywhere you go. I suppose he’d only distract a fraction of your men from their duties.”

  “And you presume to think you’d distract them all?”

  “I am very charming,” she said, smirking. She handed him this new concoction, which he obediently drank, glad for the small relief it provided in his side. It also made him feel a bit drowsy.

  He reclined back and his blankets were softly placed around him. His was beginning to fill with what felt like gentle snowfall, darkness knocking politely on the door, persuading him to let it in.

  “Good night, Roland,” she said, and then switched off the light as he fell asleep.

  Chapter 5

  “Ah! Snake eyes, you owe me six shots of fairy, you son of a bitch!” Tiana crowed at Opie, pushing the shots he’d tried to foster on her, towards him.

  Around them, the den roared their approval. Beyond she could hear the batter of fists into flesh as the two enormous elven men fighting in the arena pounded one another to dirt.

  Opie, grinning broadly and ever the good loser, handed his cigarette to one of the other Red League, and slammed one shot after the other, until six two-ounce glasses were sitting face down on the table.

  Then he belched.

  “KILLER!” roared the Red League around the table. Tiana’s shoulders were roughly jostled in congratulations, and she grinned herself silly, pushing down the exhaustion which wished to drag her win down.

  She hoped tonight would be an early night.

  Gods how she hoped it.

  She fended off two more offers for continued drinking games by lifting her tepid ale into the air, the one she’d be nursing all night, and ordered rounds for the lot. As one they pounded their mugs on the table and then she was forced to slam her foul beer alongside her crew. Only then was she able to bow out of the room while they were swarming the poor serving girl with orders.

  She didn’t get far before Opie found his way to her side. He slung an arm around her shoulder. “Good night together, Killian. We got the Five Fingers to also call your daddy Don. By the end of the month, I’m sure we’ll have em all.”

  “Then every night will be like tonight,” she responded.

  “All the better for it! I can spend every night in a different ladies bed and smoke cigarettes until I cough fire and nicotine as I sleep.”

  “I hope you well on your quest, brother.”

  Opie wiggled his pierced eyebrows, then veered off as he spotted a pretty girl bending over the bar, ordering a drink.

  “My destiny awaits!” he called, swallowed by the crowd.

  Tiana shook her head, still grinning as Asha took her roommate's place.

  “It smells like piss and cigarettes,” she noted.

  “Funny you should say that. Opie was just here.”

  Asha shook her head, unbraided curls flouncing. “That poor girl.”

  “Eh, he’s harmless. Just enthusiastic.”

  “And what about you, Killian? Any women for your bed tonight? I heard the Weird Sisters were contemplating asking you to theirs.”

  “The three of them?” Tiana snorted. “They couldn’t handle me.”

  “I heard there’s four now.”

  “Four? Asha, you know I don’t bother myself with less than five!”

  Asha favored her with a twitch of her lip. They stopped near the edge of the fitting pit. A deep hole dug into the ground where within, the two fighters were whaling on each other. They’d discarded their weapons into broken heaps on the floor. It was mighty hard to pierce elven skin and more often than not, weapons just turned into an annoyance.

  “Any word on the magically forged steel?” Tiana asked, rubbing her chin as she considered the piles of weak metal.

  “No,” Asha replied. “We haven’t been able to get our hands on the type of fire we need.”

  “What type of fire?”

  “Fire wraith, fire.”

  Tiana whistled. “So now we really are hedging our bets on fairy tales.”

  “The Don wants it done. He insists.”

  “He’s turning up empty stones. All the fire wraiths are gone. They found they didn’t have any more interest in this world and up and vanished like the smoke they are.”

  “That’s just what they want you to think.”

  Tiana turned around, resting her elbows on the bars they’d put up around the pit. Her father stood before her, forty and as imposing as ever. A thick greying mustache crossed his upper lip and wine sparkled in his eyes.

  “Good evening, sir. I was just coming to find you.”

  “Killian, my boy. No need for sirs. It’s just family here.”

  Which meant, everyone in their circle was a member of the Red League. The bruisers who’d followed his father over had herded everyone else away.

  Tiana grinned. “Any more conspiracies, Pops? I’m always in the mood to hear a good one.”

  “Don’t be cheeky with me,” de Rossi warned, wagging a finger. He was in good spirits—and quite into the spirits. His admonishment didn’t carry nearly as much weight as it did when he dressed his son down earlier that evening. “I’m still mad at you for your strong-arming me.”

  “You’ll learn to forgive me one day, I’m sure of it.”

  He snorted. “I already have Cricks and Fingers clamoring at our door expecting to be let into the Trough.”

  Tiana shrugged. “So give them something else. Let them in here.” She gestured around to the wild hoots and hollering of the steadily drunker and drunker Red League. “This place is big enough to hold the lot of em. Let the dogs in the yard, don’t let them into the house.”

  “You think you’re very clever, don’t you, my boy?”

  “Humble, too.”

  De Rossi grunted. “Well, then...looks like you’re ready to get to the fun bits.”

  Tiana felt Asha go still at her side, and Tiana glanced over at her second, who was staring down into the pit; the same pits where she’d once had to make her living. Those eyes quickly came up to hers then flicked away.

  “What kind of fun bits?” Tiana inquired casually.

  “The kind that includes the fancy pistol you like blowing holes in walls with, Killer.”

  Tiana held her hands up in a what can ya do manner.

  “I’m not sending you out to harass the dogs anymore. Opie can do that without you—the boy’s mad enough. You and Asha and anyone else but Opie, are going to start handling some import and exports.”

  Tiana’s heart stopped.

  “Of fairy and dust?”

  “Yeah, sure. And weapons.”

  Don de Rossi led them away from the main bustle of Blood Alley. Blood Alley was a series of tunnels built beneath the edge of the Sludge and the Glitter. Its main entrance was above ground, in a swanky cocktail bar which sold under the table Green Fairy to the rich men and women curious enough to try it and ballsy enough to tell their friends how edgy it made them.

  However, beneath was where the trade of the truly illegal went on. In sprawling tunnels, there existed all places of selling and buying. It was a Red League operated and owned area. Anyone was welcome to come in and purchase their goods, watch a fight, buy some booze, do some drugs, and meet a fine fellow or gal.

>   Just so long as they knew who they were paying it all to.

  However, only the Red League was allowed to sell their dust, their iron and their green lady and their girls here. Unless her father did what she was proposing and allow the smaller gangs who now looked at him as their Don, to come in and sell under his protection. As their incomes became steady and as their product became dependent on the market produced by the de Rossi family, the nail on their gang’s coffin would be sealed with the de Rossi name, and Phillip de Rossi’s empire would grow.

  Still, there were parts of Blood Alley Tiana had never even been. Bowels she’d never wandered into quite far enough to have seen. Especially when it came to the more secretive and deeply illegal operations such as the movement of the M-Mod weapons—the Magically Modified. Things like her gun operated in such a manner, stored with magical matter which could turn into catastrophic weapons with a stroke of the thumb. All it took was a bit of the blood of the owner to be fed the little crystal embedded in the metal, and then that weapon was theirs and would operate to their touch alone.

  Some, of course, would work with anyone, but those were volatile and their lives short lived. Magic liked consistency. It also liked to have a master.

  Tiana absent-mindedly stroked the gun at her side as she turned this over in her mind. She didn’t know the precise science behind using the crystal deep from within the Altarren mountains, where from so long ago, the race of magical people descended from. For hundreds of years, all manner of things crept from the glaciers into a previous mundane world and turned it on its head, until the world became what it was now: barely remembering the ordinary thing it had once been.

  In those new chambers, people were all working in what appeared to be organized pandemonium, moving around vast amounts of merchandise, monitored by an overseer who was also a bearded dwarven woman.

  “This is Pene,” said de Rossi.

  Pene looked up, shrewd eyes behind blurry optics.

  “Hullo,” said Tiana. “Asha, say hello.”

  “Hello,” said Asha, yellow eyes taking in the insanity and calculating deep in that brain of hers. Watching Asha think was one of Tiana’s favorite things to do. It was like watching magic happen.