All That Glitters

by Auston Habershaw

  Tyvian stood there for a moment, letting the effect of his presence sink in, and then nodded Myreon and Hool forward before the Defenders could be called for. “Ready?” he asked them.

  “Are you sure this will work?” Hool asked, staring down a few men who dared to gape at her.

  Tyvian nodded. “Once Artus gets it to you, wait until they are at their most frightened, and then start buying things.”

  “Which things?” Hool asked.

  Tyvian shook his head. “It won’t matter—­if someone makes an offer, just say yes and slap hands.”

  Myreon, her eyes scanning the crowd for trouble, nodded in the direction of the man who was the spitting image of the late Gethrey Andolon. “There he is. Ready?”

  Tyvian shot her a wink. “I’ve been ready my whole life for this.” He broke away from them both. “Keep a low profile until the proper moment, you two.”

  They nodded; Tyvian made a beeline for the specter of his dead friend. The crowd parted around him as though he was still on fire. He wondered how many of them had been present to witness that. He wondered if it had been as impressive as he’d hoped.

  “Gethrey” spotted Tyvian from twenty paces off. He doffed his absurd hat—­a miniature mountain with a working waterfall and field of wildflowers—­and waited for Tyvian to arrive. He gave Tyvian a winning smirk. Tyvian would have known that smirk anywhere.

  “Hello, Xahlven,” he said, coming to stop a few paces away. “Still like to play dress-­up, I see.”

  Xahlven grinned from beneath his shroud. He spoke loudly enough that everyone nearby could hear. “Plan to stick a dagger in my eye, Tyv?”

  Tyvian smiled. “Much worse—­I came to talk.”

  Gethrey/Xahlven didn’t move, but something significant was happening to the ley of the room—­Tyvian felt chills and hot flashes travel up his spine; winds picked up and died. Finally, it stopped. “You’re warded. Quite competently, too,” his brother observed.

  Tyvian shrugged. “Mage Defenders are trained to fight other magi, first and foremost. You should have thought of that before you framed her.” He cocked an eyebrow at the traders surrounding them, who were looking on with intense curiosity even as they kept trading with one another. “Can they understand what we’re saying?”

  Xahlven shook his head. “They are hearing you threaten Gethrey Andolon with death—­that’s all. Any moment now and the Defenders will be on you. Was there something you wanted to say before they drag you off?”

  Tyvian fished Gethrey’s amulet from around his neck and held it where Xahlven could see. “Oh, I’m not much worried about the Defenders just now, Xahlven. Sic them on me and you’ll have a colossus rampaging through here—­I doubt you want that much chaos. You can’t collapse the markets if the marketplace is collapsed, if you follow my meaning.”

  Xahlven smiled tightly, which didn’t look right on Gethrey’s face. “Really, Tyvian—­that’s rather violent, even for you.”

  “Xahlven, you have no idea the violence I am capable of right now.” Tyvian dropped the colossus amulet. He eyed the crowd. Business was already taking shape—­whispers passed from person to person and courier djinns dispatched even as everybody kept an eye on them.

  And while nobody kept their eye on Artus.

  “Very well—­a private chat, then.” Xahlven snapped his fingers and the boiling human chaos of the Mundane fell away, replaced by a perfectly circular room with no doors. The walls were of polished ebony, the ground covered by a lush purple rug. There was a couronne board on a small table and two chairs. Xahlven stood across from him, shroudless, hands folded around his staff. “An illusion. To keep our conversation private. Everyone else will think we walked off, but they will forget where.”

  Tyvian snorted. “Obviously. I’m not an idiot, Xahlven.”

  “Really? That’s a statement in need of justification, I feel.”

  “This won’t get anywhere if you keep insulting my intelligence. You’re DiVarro and I know it—­you’re behind the whole damned thing. You wanted me to believe it was Mother, but that doesn’t wash.”

  Xahlven nodded. “You always did have a hang-­up over mother. It was an easy enough diversion. It kept you out of my hair for a few days while I planned my counterstroke.”

  The lies came quickly to Tyvian’s lips. After the night he’d had, pretending to look shocked was easy. “What do you mean? Didn’t you frame Myreon? Didn’t you bring me here?”

  Xahlven sighed, shaking his head. “You’re always a step or two behind, Tyv. Very frustrating. I didn’t bring you here, no—­Mother did. She framed Myreon.”

  Oh, very good, Xahlven—­keep thinking I’m stupid. “Why?”

  “To contest me, of course. She is as capable of manipulating Gethrey as I am. I created him, in a sense—­I gave him the resources to do what he is about to do—­but Mother was able to steer his thought process through her control of the Mute Prophets, in which Gethrey so desperately wished to advance, as you know. When Alafarr was framed, Gethrey felt he was safe, but rumors, when precisely fashioned, are as accurate as bowshots. She gave Andolon the idea of trying to hire you, knowing you would hate him, and therefore knowing you would disrupt his plans.”

  Tyvian didn’t bother trying to follow the convolutions of Xahlven’s fictitious plot; he focused on looking confused. He wasn’t here to parley, he was here to buy time. Just enough time for Myreon to work a little weakness into Xahlven’s illusory room—­just a little one.

  He kept up the charade. “But . . . when you visited me before my trial, you told me to give Gethrey up . . . so . . .” Tyvian slapped his forehead. “Of course.”

  Xahlven chuckled. “Tyvian, you are far too predictable. What better way for me to prevent you from doing something than to tell you to do it?”

  Tyvian pressed on. “But why, Xahlven? Why crash the Secret Exchange? How does it help you to get all that money?”

  Xahlven shook his head, toying absently with the pieces on the couronne board. “What is the point of this conversation, Tyvian? Do you honestly expect me to reveal my endgame? No—­not a chance. What is your endgame, hmmm?”

  Behind Xahlven there was a small alteration in the illusion—­a door, not large, but big enough to admit a person’s hand. Myreon had done it, Hann bless her.

  Tyvian advanced on Xahlven slowly, putting subtle menace into his limping steps. “My endgame is to stop this, obviously. Don’t let the market crash. It’s madness. The whole West will suffer. You’ll embolden the Kalsaaris. You’ll . . . you’ll make another tasteless, rich twit like Gethrey, and I don’t think the shipbuilding industry could handle another Argent Wind.”

  If Xahlven had one weakness, it was his lack of physical guile. He backed away from Tyvian smoothly, closer and closer to the little door. The little door that was now opening. Xahlven raised his free hand. “You talk as if the market crash is something that can be stopped, Tyvian. It isn’t, though—­you made that possible.”

  That one took Tyvian a bit off-­guard. “What?”

  “What makes markets flow, Tyvian?” Xahlven stopped just before the wall and leaned on the mantel of the illusory fireplace. “Fear. Uncertainty. The real challenge to Gethrey’s plan was to foster false confidence and then pull the rug out—­with my agents working on his behalf, he did quite well. He just needed a tipping point. He was originally going to use various crime syndicates, but then he stumbled upon a better option, or so he thought—­namely you. That was Mother’s doing and, but for my interference, it would have worked to prevent the crash. You would have stopped Gethrey, end of story.”

  Tyvian frowned. “What did you do?”

  “I knew you’d escape from Keeper’s Court, if you wound up there.” Xahlven shrugged. “After that, the auguries were pretty clear. It would end with a war-­construct rampaging through Crosstown, a monster assaulting Defenders all ove
r town, and you—­known criminal mastermind—­barging in here and insisting upon a private audience with Gethrey Andolon in the midst of his apparent attempt to commit financial suicide.”

  “That’s the tipping point—­me, here, now. I’m causing the crash. You’ve won. But . . . why?” Tyvian stared at his brother. This part—­this singular part—­might just be the truth. Xahlven knew this conversation was going to take place. Did he, though, foresee Artus’s hands under his cloak?

  Xahlven was smiling. “I don’t have to tell you anything. ‘Why?’ is not a question pawns like you get to ask, Tyvian.”

  Tyvian smirked. “I should think I would at least rate a shepherd.”

  Xahlven kept smiling. “I’m glad you and I agree that I’ve already won and we’re down to debating semantics. I thank you for your ser­vice.”

  The illusory chamber dropped away and Tyvian was left face-­to-­face with Myreon and Artus, both of whom gave him curt nods and stony expressions. He clapped his hands together and faced the glares of scores of confused-­looking traders. “Well, must be going—­Defenders and whatnot. Enjoy making your fortunes, everybody!”

  Xahlven cocked his head. “Wait . . . what are you . . .”

  Tyvian, though, did not pause—­he and his companions vanished into the crowd, losing Xahlven-­as-­Gethrey behind a few massive pillars. It wasn’t until they were clear on the other side of the exchange that he dared ask Artus. “Well, did you make the switch?”

  Artus grinned and held out a hand. There, stacked neatly in sweat-­stained bundles, were all the trade receipts Xahlven had collected that day as well as his ledger and autoquill. “Jackpot,” he said.

  CHAPTER 31

  TO REAP THE WHIRLWIND

  Hool stood at the center of the seething chaos of the floor with all the regal tranquility of a predator among prey. The analogy was apt, even to her—­there were many times on the Taqar when she had stood among the fleeting antelope and watched them scatter, terrified beyond the capacity for thought. This place, this “exchange,” was not unlike that. Like all good predators, she stood still and silent and waited for the right moment to pounce.

  She left her hands folded behind her back. No one approached her, no one paid her any heed—­that was normal, Tyvian had said, since she was unknown here. In a few moments, however, she was going to make them remember her name. For once, the collected masses of humanity would beg her attention and hang on her every word. She would defeat them at their own stupid game. She liked the idea of it.

  Look for the moment. Hool studied the crowd, still waiting. A lifetime of studying the body language of large animals had given her an exceptional capacity to cold read others. After several years among humans, she had fine-­tuned it into a tool that could be used to predict what humans were going to do just before they did it. She could do this without sorcery and without magic hats or crystal balls or power sinks or whatever else humans used. She was a gnoll; she did not need sorcery to be powerful and smart. Lyrelle Reldamar had been right: she knew them better than she thought.

  Around her, the ­people shouting to each other and slapping hands were growing more frantic. The numbers ­people were shouting got lower and lower and lower. Soon now—­soon she needed to act. From across the exchange she saw Artus, Tyvian, and Myreon watching her carefully. She nodded to them, holding her human posture upright and serene, as she had seen Lyrelle Reldamar do.

  “Now, Mama?” Brana asked at her side. Unlike her, he was a bundle of nervous energy, his eyes flitting to every bustling human as though ready to chase them down.

  “Wait,” Hool cautioned him, and then looked toward where the shrouded Xahlven stood, his hands also folded behind his back. He had no idea that the paper tickets hidden in his robes were, in fact, blank. The real tickets—­the only true record of his trades for the day—­had been passed to her by Artus and were nestled securely underneath Hool’s shroud. Xahlven, in his arrogance, hadn’t even checked them yet. Even if he did, he could not reveal himself—­for one thing, that would mean acknowledging that he was pretending to be Andolon, which was a crime, and it would also require him to show everybody he was a mage on the floor of the exchange, which was also a crime. There was nothing he could do but call in the Defenders.

  And now it was too late.

  “Buy!” Hool barked at the nearby men. “Buying karfan! Buying cherille! Buying all the things!”

  The traders’ heads cocked in her direction, but they hesitated.

  Hool fixed them with her copper glare. “What are you waiting for? Buy, stupid!”

  Above her, floating near the center of the exchange, rotating illusory numbers of the current day’s trading showed the dire straits of the markets—­the warnings were clear, and the traders on the floor were rapidly adapting their strategies to try and salvage themselves from bankruptcy. Though she did not fully understand the numbers in front of her, Hool knew enough to expect the wild surge of humanity that swarmed her, waving their tickets at her in the vain hope she could save them.

  As Tyvian had instructed, she bought every ticket waved in her face, each purchase recovering what Andolon/Xahlven had sold just a short time before. Those goods? They were borrowed—­pinned at their original high price from the original stakeholders. For every pile of goods Hool purchased now, she made a huge profit at the expense of the men who had loaned the goods to the false Andolon that very morning when the prices were high. Hool did not have a head for math, but the speed with which she was slapping hands with sweaty-­palmed fools was such that she had no doubt the profits would be exceptional. Stupid as it was, she felt her adrenaline surge at the thought of having power over these humans—­of being able to finally do as she pleased without their incessant judgment and foolish notions of propriety.

  For the first time, she thought she might be coming to understand wealth.

  “We’re doing it, Mama!” Brana shouted over the din, slapping palms with another man and exchanging tickets.

  “Yes.” Hool nodded, but didn’t let herself get carried away—­something was wrong. She glanced over toward where Xahlven should have been. He was not there. “Almost time to go,” she yelled to Brana. She noted also that Tyvian and Artus and Myreon were likewise gone—­they knew their time was short as well.

  “Buy!” Brana called. “Karfan! Wine! Salt!”

  They slapped more hands.

  Suddenly, everyone stopped. Hool blinked at them all, “What?”

  No one answered. They were all staring at the center of the Exchange, where a massive wraith of none other than Archmage Xahlven Reldamar floated. Around him the numbers of the day’s trading so far floated as well—­even Hool could tell they were dire, worse than dire.

  “In the interest of the health of the Domain of Saldor and its allies,” Xahlven said solemnly, “trading is hereby suspended for the day, possibly longer, while we look into what caused this loss.”

  One trader couldn’t believe his ears. “What? WHAT? He can’t do that! Who does he think he is, doing that? This is business! This is money! He can’t just stop it from happening!”

  The man—­hopeless, wild eyed—­cast his gaze around at the other traders on the floor, most of whom were standing stone still, in a state of abject shock. Gaping at the wraith of Xahlven, they looked like rows of animated corpses wondering what happened to their souls.

  “We don’t have to listen to him!” the man screamed. “Keep trading! Keep going! Selling karfan—­cheap! Sell! SELL!”

  Nobody listened. Everyone was too busy cleaning up the ashes of their own financial empires to hear an angry little man scream. Hool noted that Xahlven had slapped hands with this man several times early in the run. She walked up to him and found the tickets with the man’s smell all over them—­they smelled like fish oil. “You owe me for these,” she said simply.

  The man sagged as he looked at his own handi
work. “Who . . . who in blazes are you?”

  “I am the richest lady you know.” Hool looked down her human nose at him. “Now, pay me or I will rip off your arms.”

  The Argent Wind sailed out of Saldor Harbor with most everyone ashore assuming Gethrey Andolon had skipped town to avoid his debts, assuming Tyvian’s plan had worked as he’d hoped, though they hadn’t tarried long enough for him to confirm it. In any event, the ponderous vessel sailed along the coast, heading west toward Eretheria. There was no sign of pursuit.

  Hool was the unofficial new owner of the vessel, a fact that she did not seem to enjoy. It was, on some level, piracy, but Gethrey’s former crew of thugs and brutish sailors didn’t seem to mind so long as Hool’s newfound wealth paid them for the voyage—­which it did, and amply.

  Brana spent most of his time in the rigging, working with the sailors. He nattered on to anybody who would listen about everything he was learning about ships. His Trade was improving markedly, though it was now healthily spiced with various maritime curses that made Hool grumble. The journey, all things considered, was going well.

  Tyvian was sitting at the table in the wardroom, the ship gently rocking to and fro. Across from him was Hool, looking miserable as usual, and Myreon, who had her boots up and was reading one of Gethrey’s vast array of books that had clearly been selected based on the impressiveness of their bindings and not the intelligence of their contents. This particular book was an Eddoner bildungsroman about a young Wardenrider seeking to avenge his father’s death at the hands of gnolls, of all things.

  “Hool,” Myreon asked, “do gnolls drink blood?”

  Hool’s ears went back. “Does that stupid book say we drink blood?”

  “It does indeed.”

  Hool snorted. “Well . . . we do. Sometimes.”