by Eric Ugland
“No time for questions, but for your friends,” he said, his voice getting quiet. He pulled five coins out of the air, and pressed them into my hands. “Now run.”
I paused for a second.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You did what you could, thief,” he said with a smile. “More than can be said of my brother.”
I leapt out the window.
Chapter 133
I tumbled quite a bit further than I expected, especially since I’d forgotten I wasn’t on the first floor. It was more like the second and a half. I slammed through branches, which slowed me down, but definitely smacked me upside the head and downside the butt and all around, before finally hitting the soft soil beneath the tree with a whoomp. I got the wind knocked out of me, and I laid there gasping at air for an embarrassing amount of time.
Above me, I could hear the Emperor speaking to someone. A slow, struggling sort of speech. I knew my time was short. People would definitely remember a new elf delivering food to the Emperor, and as much as I appreciated the exit through the window in the garden, it was not going to make me look any less guilty.
I rolled to my feet and started running, just doing my utmost to get space between myself and the palace.
Night time was closing in, and clouds seemed to be rocketing across the sky, a storm coming. Darkness on top of darkness to the west. As if the weather, itself, knew what had happened.
I sprinted across the lawn, moving through the shadows.
Then I tripped and went down hard, sliding across the grass until I wound up in a gravel path, eating shit in the worst way.
“You there,” a gruff voice said. “Little elf girl.”
I looked up as large boots approached me.
“Or boy. Whatever.”
A big soldier stood above me, and he put his spear haft down near my face, smashing it into the ground.
“Where are you running from?” the guard asked, bending down to stare at my face.
My mind raced. I turned halfway over to face him and said, “I was a runner on the night shift, but now I’m running from all the scary night shit.”
“Pretty smart mouth on you,” the guard replied.
“That’s what got me in trouble,” I said. “Told a joke to some Thingman, and he didn’t appreciate it, so now I’m here, hoping to get home for dinner before I become dinner.”
The big soldier chuckled, and I got a whiff of his breath. It seemed to be nine parts alcohol and one part disgusting. With a single hand, he grabbed onto the back of my collar, and he wrenched me to my feet.
“Humorless thugs,” he said, “the lot of ‘em.”
“That’s what I said,” I replied.
“Quickest way out is there,” the big guy said, pointing to his left. “And take a carriage tonight.” He pushed a silver coin into my hand.
“Thank you,” I said, and I genuinely meant it. We may have been employed by different sides, but the guy seemed nice enough. “Clyde Hatchett.”
“Erwin Schneller,” he said, and he crushed my hand with his. “Get home safe.”
I took his advice, and ran for the exit.
I got outside the palace, and snagged a carriage quickly enough. Maybe just a minute of walking along the street.
A deep and ominous bell rang out.
“Oh hells,” the driver said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Emperor’s dead.”
“Shit. That’s bad.”
“Time to move out o’the capital, if’n you askin’ me. Looking to buy a carriage and horse?”
“No,” I said reflexively.
“Pity.”
With that, we were off.
Chapter 134
Alarms, bells, shouts, and all the rest rang out as the carriage trundled through the city streets. It wasn’t quite on the order of riots — more sort of mass confusion. People were congregating everywhere, searching for news. Groups of soldiers headed off with purpose, to what must have been where their orders dictated they should go, but I couldn’t see any rhyme or reason to it.
Once in Old Town, things became a little calmer. Perhaps the age of the buildings lent a little chill to the air. Or maybe the people who chose to live in Old Town were people who appreciated the slower pace of life. Whatever the case, I didn’t feel like a riot was about to happen, just that people were looking for answers.
The bar was doing good business, though it was a more subdued crowd than I’d ever seen before. People were milling about, drinking in silence, looking sullenly at everyone else there. There was a heady sense of unease about the room. Hell, about the whole city. And I could see why: given the lack of an obvious successor, all sorts of shit was about to fly.
I hopped out of the carriage, paid the man a gold, which made him smile broadly, and he tried one more time to sell his horse and carriage to me. I was sorely tempted, but figured it might be best to hold on to the money I had for the time being.
I headed for my apartment, but there was a young boy sitting on the entrance steps, blocking my way.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“You Hatchett?” the kid asked in reply.
“Sure.”
The kid stood up, passed me a piece of folded parchment, and then ran off as fast as his dirty little feet would carry him.
I unfolded the note.
Hatchett.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, it has become necessary to hold an all-hands meeting tonight. Please come at all-due haste as soon as this message finds you. Failure to attend will be grounds for dismissal from the Union.
Lord Rowland Tamblyn
Biscuit’s Union
I sighed. I had basically zero desire to visit with the old fuddy-duddys, especially considering they’d probably spend the entire time talking about how political uncertainties might effect their supply chain logistics and mess with the cookie making empire. God forbid they talk about anything that might be more germane to being a damn thieves’ guild. Also, it seemed like maybe this was a perfect opportunity to exit the guild. I’d seen little use so far for them, and they’d been quite a bit of a hassle to me. And they still hadn’t paid out my take from my first job for them.
It was thinking about that gold that convinced me to go to the meeting.
To think it was greed that doomed me.
Before doing anything, however, I went upstairs. Shae and Boris the Kobold were nowhere to be found, but given the stack of golden armor in the corner, Leofing was around and had yet to be given his own quarters.
I pulled out the parchment the emperor gave me there, and examined the wax seal holding it closed. The curiosity rolling over me was insane — I wanted to read it so very badly. And yet, the guy had been good to me, and he’d given me a final order. It would be a truly shitty move to ignore it.
And so I put the parchment and the signet ring into the best hidey-hole I could find in the apartment. Then I took out the coins the Emperor had given me, for my ‘friends’. Originally, I thought they might have been, like, super-platinum or something, worth insane amounts of gold. Then, looking over them, I saw there wasn’t anything official on them, so I did a little identification spell on them.
You have found Favor Coins of the Emperor.
These coins signify that you have been granted a favor by the individual on the coin, in this case, the Emperor of Glaton.
Favor coins. They went in the hidey-hole too, and I made a mental note to ask Matthew about them.
Then I got my usual clothing on, with daggers in place, the KrakenTooth on one side. The only thing I didn’t take was money. I had a feeling things might get crazy as the night wore on, and I didn’t want to wind up losing gold. Or looking like I had gold to lose.
Five minutes after the boy ran off after giving me the note, and I was jogging north through the streets, heading for the Arena district.
Chapter 135
The entire district was nuts. Lights were on everywhere, so th
at it was almost as bright as day. There were town criers shouting out the news, most of it easily identifiable as hearsay, gossip, or just plain fabrication. Yet there was a common thread: Valamir was looking for his brother’s killer, an elf.
I quickly pulled my hood up over my head, keeping my telltale ears out of sight. But other elves weren’t quite so lucky, and I saw quite a few already being harried and harassed. It was clear something like this was going to get worse. And who knows if the truth would ever come out? If anyone would point out that the emperor had died alone, with no trace of wounds or poison.
The lights were out around the Biscuit’s Union, but the front door was unlocked. As soon as I opened it, there was an old fellow there nodding at me.
“Last one,” he said.
I recognized him then — the guy who ran the midnight cookie stand.
“Hey,” I said, “you.”
He gave a wizened smile.
“Me. Come on, they’re waiting for us.”
He pulled me in, then locked the door behind me. Thanks to him being there, I didn’t get lost in the place. We went up a few flights of stairs to get to the very top of the building, at least by my reckoning, and walked into a large open room that seemed to take up the entire floor. It was huge. A large glass skylight let in some moonlight, which gave the whole thing a surreal mood. A bunch of chairs were set out in front of a small raised platform. Oddly enough, only two of the chairs were empty. Midnight Cookie and I took the last two seats, and the general chatter of the room subsided.
Victor Woolf, the guild leader, stood up from his chair, and walked up the small steps to the platform. He looked out at all of us in front of him.
“Biscuit’s Union,” he said. “It has been too long. A shame it takes an event such as this to bring us all together again.” He paused and peered at certain faces, giving smiles here and there. “We have confirmed the rumors — the Emperor is indeed dead. We can say, for certain, we were not in the realm of responsibility. None of our sister organizations have taken credit for this act of vile treason either, so it remains a mystery as to who may have done this—”
“Heard it was an elf,” someone in the crowd shouted.
“So what if it was?” Victor countered. “Is there some all-elf group operating in Glaton I have yet to hear about?”
No answer from the crowd.
“If outbursts were acceptable in this forum,” Victor continued, “I would hope they had at least a modicum of pertinency to the topic at hand, beyond gossip and fear mongering. We have enough questions to answer without getting to that ridiculousness.”
There was some soft laughter in the room, and the tension seemed to evaporate. Not completely, but there was more of a feeling that things were okay. We weren’t witnessing the end of days.
Unfortunately, what happened next was the stuff of my nightmares.
It was, indeed, a discussion of bakery logistics. Of supply chains. Trade. Pricing structures. How political instability might affect both the cost of inputs and the price of the goods. Would people see cookies and high-end baked goods as a luxury product in these trying times, or might they turn towards sugary treats as a means of self-medication? It went on, and on, and on. These were people who loved to hear themselves talk, it seemed. And they were very intelligent and wanted everyone else to know it. So as the night progressed, the arguments grew more and more pedantic and petty, until there was a shouting match over on-site sugar processing.
Midnight Cookie had taken the pragmatic approach: his head fell all the way back, his mouth wide open. He was sleeping. He snored at nearly regular intervals, and no one seemed to pay him any mind. Victor did his best to keep things from getting out of control, but even his attention span was waning. I looked over at Rowland, and couldn’t help but laugh. He had such a look of rapt concentration on his face that I wondered if he’d set a puppet in his place and snuck out.
As I watched him though, his expression never changed. And it was creeping me out. I started to worry the old man had had a stroke or a heart attack or something.
Cool Beans, you’ve learned the skill Economics. Now you can make educated guesses on how to best lose money.
It seemed like we’d talked all the way through the night, because I thought sunlight was coming through the skylight. Which seemed believable to me, but everyone else stopped talking. They all looked skyward, trying figure out what the hell was happening.
Fire.
A great circle of flames rose up, all the way around the building.
For a short time, a few surreal moments, there was a stillness in the place. It was funny, in a way. To see all of us staring out a skylight, mouths agape. No one believing what they were seeing.
And then the first person screamed. It sounded like a woman, but that was just me being judgy, because it was definitely a man sitting three to my left. The panic started at that moment, and everyone ran for it. The largest horde headed towards a set of double doors to the rear of the building, and another horde broke for the front. A frantic few ran for a side exit.
In a heartbeat, there were the unmistakable crashes of people falling down the stairs, being pummeled under panicked feet, and screams of pain.
I was still in my seat, but I wasn’t alone. Rowland was still in his chair, the horrible, creepy rictus still plastered across his face. Victor remained on the platform, watching the cylinder of fire continue to rise.
He blinked a few times, then looked out at the sea of empty chairs, his gaze sweeping back and forth a few times before he finally saw me looking back at him.
“Is this some weird hazing thing?” I asked.
I knew it wasn’t, but I was holding out hope this wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
He smiled, a sort of sad smile.
“I wish it were,” he said. “I fear we’ve made worse enemies than I’d anticipated.”
“So, uh, this,” I pointed up at the, “is not going to end well?”
“There is little we can do but prepare for death.”
He started walking, then paused at Rowland. He waved his hand in front of Rowland’s face. There was no response.
The leader gave Rowland a hard smack across the face, and said face deformed where the leader struck.
“Wax,” the leader hissed. He picked up the body and tossed it to the side, then stomped on it. It was little more than a cleverly made dummy. “That vile, treasonous weasel.”
“Wait—”
“This meeting was secret. Only one other person knew about it before this evening—”
“This wasn’t in response to the Emperor?”
“Unfortunate coincidence. In part. Certainly we were going to address the Emperor’s death being that it happened, and those concerns took up more time than I would’ve liked. But the larger question was going to be about our continued existence as a criminal organization. Come. I will speak on it as we hurry.”
“Where are we going?”
“We may perish in this, but I will not let Rowland gain a copper from his treachery!”
He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and yanked me along with him, leading us over to a wall. He whipped a key from his pocket, somehow inserted it into a wall I’d sworn was solid, and opened a door up to reveal a tight spiral staircase.
I took one last look back at the skylight, and saw the towering inferno closing in on itself. Smoke curled up from the back doors most of the guild had tried to leave through.
We hurtled down the stairs in something like a controlled fall. At the bottom, Victor kicked the door open. We were in an office I’d never been in before, coming out where a bookshelf had been. A bit trite, but effective nonetheless.
He strode to the desk, and I walked to a window.
Outside was fire. Flames. It was like they were being weaved together, going from the ground up into the sky. Beyond the flames, I saw a bunch of mancers. Twenty at least, all wearing white hooded robes. Behind them were figures in masks. No one else was around.
The square around the Arena had emptied. The mancers all had their hands extended, but any other details were obscured by the fire. Which felt like it was frying my eyeballs.
I realized I was running out of mana, which meant I’d been running my healing spell without thinking about it.
“Are you going to help?” Victor asked.
I turned away from the window.
Victor had opened a safe in the wall behind a painting — naturally — as well as a larger safe that seemed to have been hidden in the floor.
“Help me take everything from that safe,” he pointed to the wall, “and put it in here.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Rowland doesn’t know about this safe,” he sneered. “He knows about that one. He thinks everything of value is held in that safe. And he was mostly right. But if I put it in this one, he will have no way to get it. All our deeds, all our bank records, all our keys, everything.”
I shrugged, “I’ll help if you tell me the combination.”
He shrugged. “21-8-7.”
I smiled, wondering if luck played a part in giving me a number I’d be able to remember. “Let’s do this.”
It took mere seconds to move everything, since it was mostly papers. A ton of account coins, though, which were apparently the Guild’s coins. I noticed one of Gideon’s in the bunch.
“Why did he do it?” I asked.
“Rowland?” the leader asked. “He’s always been a bit of a weasel. He loved to play the rich man, but his family was never that flush. Far as I know, he ran out of money, so he wants what the Union owns. Enough to make any man one of the wealthiest in the kingdom.”
When we were done, we returned everything to how it had looked. Which I thought was a bit silly considering that fire was about to come and kill us all.
“Why are we bothering with putting it all back?” I asked. “Won’t it burn down?”