by Logan Jacobs
“I guess it would be pretty bad if their victorious general suddenly turned up dead under mysterious circumstances,” Dar said.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “This city is perfect for us, so the only thing that could mess up our plans now is--”
“Is if a powerful, big-shot elf winds up dead,” Penny finished my statement. “Especially when he’s just had a whole party thrown in his honor.”
“Yeah, that might be enough to make the Gold City a little bit stricter about things,” I said, “and that would ruin my favorite thing about this place so far.”
“You mean the fact that everything here is so… well, loose?” Dar asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. “We want to keep people relaxed, since that means their morals will be a little more relaxed, too.”
“And that means their purse strings will also be a little looser,” Dar added.
“Right,” I said. “Besides, even though I know we could kill Tevian, it might get messy. After all, he’s not just a normal elf.”
“You mean because he swallowed an extra dose of asshole?” Penny asked. “Yeah, I have to agree with you about that.”
“I meant because he has magic,” I laughed. “That makes him a lot more dangerous than just your average elf.”
“That’s true,” Ava said with a nod. “He and Clodia were able to fight off a whole horde of orcs basically by themselves, and they only used their magic to do it.”
“A horde of drunken, rampaging orcs,” I added. “That’s exactly my point.”
“Okay, so we’re not going to kill him, but do we have to pretend like he’s not even here?” the pixie thief sighed. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best.”
“Oh, we won’t pretend like he’s not here,” I said. “We’ll very much act like he is here, and that will let us stay one step ahead of him at all times.”
“I would prefer five steps ahead of him,” Ava said.
“Then let’s make it five steps,” I said with a smile. “Whatever you want, Ava.”
The blonde assassin blushed all the way up to her ears, but Penny spoke again before Ava could turn any more red.
“Okay, so what exactly does that look like?” Penny asked. “What do we do?”
“We do the same damn thing that we had already planned,” I replied. “We find out more about the biggest owners who are here at the party--”
“Oh, so we’re definitely staying at the party?” Dar interrupted.
“Yes, we are,” I said. “Look at the size of this thing!”
“No need to brag,” Penny snickered.
“I’m talking about the party,” I laughed. “It’s big enough that we should be able to blend in pretty easily, and we should still be able to do all the research that we need to do.”
“We just have to do it without being spotted or caught by Tevian,” Ava said.
“Exactly,” I said. “So Dar should be pretty hard to spot in the middle of the crowd, since no offense, my friend, but you’re a little on the short side.”
“I’m a perfectly average height for a halfling, thank you very much,” Dar sniffed.
“And that’s why you should be able to disappear into the crowd,” I said. “I’m taller than a lot of the people here, so I’ll have to be a little extra careful.”
“What about Ava and me?” the redheaded pixie demanded.
“Well, you both stand out in a crowd, that’s for fucking sure,” I said. “You’re the most beautiful goddamn women here.”
“Why, Wade,” Penny said with a flutter of her eyelashes. “You might make a girl blush.”
“But you’re also both very petite,” I continued with a smile, “so I think Ava might be okay to blend in.”
“Plus, she’s an assassin,” Dar pointed out. “Being able to disappear in the middle of a crowd is kind of her thing.”
“That, too,” I said, “but Penny, I’m afraid that pretty red hair of yours is like a beacon.”
“Thank you,” the pixie thief said as she tossed her bright red locks over her shoulder. “But I know what you mean. It’s hard to blend in when you can’t help but stand out.”
“Try to stick to the areas of the room with either the most light or the least light,” I said. “You can hide in the shadows, but you can also hide right beside some of the torches. The fire makes everybody’s hair look a little red in the light.”
“Got it,” Penny said. “Dar is short, Wade is clever, Ava’s an assassin, and I’m a redhead.”
“Something like that,” I chuckled.
“So you want us to split up at first?” Dar asked. “Make the rounds, talk to a few people, see what we can find out?”
“Yes, I think we’ll cover more ground that way,” I said. “And since I don’t know how long we can stay here and escape Tevian’s notice, I’d like to make as much progress as possible before then.”
“Then let’s go hunting for some big fucking fish to sell our whiskey to,” Dar said and rubbed his hands together.
“You know that you don’t hunt for fish, right?” Penny smirked. “You fish for fish.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dar rolled his eyes. “Then what would you say we’re going hunting for?”
“Some big-ass steaks!” the redheaded pixie said.
“Penny, I don’t know how to tell you this,” my halfling friend said, “but you do know that steak is just part of an animal, don’t you? Like there aren’t wild steaks out in the forests that you can hunt down and kill, right?”
“Let me have my dream, Dar,” Penny sighed. “Just me and a big-ass hunting knife out in the wilderness, and all of a sudden, what appears in front of us but a whole herd of juicy steaks? I hold my knife at the ready and slowly creep up on them-- one of the steaks in the back is a little slower, so that’s the one I’ll target. Slowly, I--”
“Penny, sweetheart,” I interrupted, “you do realize that we can afford to buy you a steak if you want one that badly.”
“But wild-caught is so much tastier,” the pixie thief said with a wink. “It’s alright, I’ll save my fantasies for later. Let’s go talk to some big fish.”
“Oh, now they’re fish, are they?” Dar demanded.
“I like to think of them more as purses that are just open and ready to be picked,” Ava said.
“I think us thieves might have a little competition from our favorite assassin,” I said with a smile. “Just remember when you’re talking to people, don’t mention anything about the whiskey up-front, okay?”
“Yep, we only talk about that after we find out if they’re loaded,” Penny said. “And if they have a way to sell it to other people, obviously.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Talk about it in the abstract first, like you have a friend who heard something about whiskey, that kind of thing. That way, you can really make sure that before you say anything, you know they’re not… uptight… about their morals.”
“That makes sense,” Dar said, “but to be fair, I don’t think very many people at this party are uptight about much of anything.”
“Except for old Stick-up-the-Ass Tevian,” Penny said.
“And remember, no elves!” I said. “We only want to talk to dwarf and halfling business owners. Things may be more relaxed in the Gold City, but I’d be surprised if they were relaxed enough for us to walk up to an elf and even mention the word whiskey.”
“Fair enough,” Penny said. “Let’s just keep an eye on each other, okay? In case anyone runs into any trouble.”
“If you do, just shout, and I’ll freeze the room,” I said, ”and then I’ll get us all out of here, okay?”
“We’re gonna have to shout loud to be heard over that music,” Dar said.
“I’ll keep an eye on both of you,” Ava told Dar and Penny. “And on you, too, Wade. I’m quite good at multitasking.”
“Good,” I said. “We’ll reconvene in a little bit, and we can meet back up here when we have any information.”
My friends nodded
, and Dar and Penny immediately slipped into the crowd to start their rounds. Ava almost disappeared before I could catch her, but I grabbed her hand at the last second.
“Don’t go far,” I murmured. “I know you can keep an eye on me even when I can’t see you, but I don’t want to lose sight of you for long.”
“I’ll stay close, don’t worry,” Ava said. “I promise that I’ll be safe.”
I nodded and released her hand, and then we split up to cover the other half of the party. I felt my stomach flip when I first lost sight of Ava, but I knew that the blonde assassin knew what she was doing. She was as badass now as she was the first time I had seen her, and just because my stomach tied itself into knots at the thought of her in danger, I knew that between the two of us, I wouldn’t let anything happen to her or our child.
There were even more people at the party now than there had been when we first walked in. Apparently, this really was the party to be at, but I wondered how much of that actually had to do with Tevian and his victory over the wild orcs. I didn’t see a hell of a lot of people who wanted to go talk to Tevian, but then again, the room was so crowded that it was hard to really move through the masses of people.
But as I looked around to see who I should approach first, I realized that the crowd was thinner through the middle of the room, and most of the party-goers moved in clusters around one of the many entertainment stations that were set up all around the room.
I couldn’t tell exactly what the entertainments were, but I figured that I probably had a pretty decent idea. Still, if I wanted to make contacts here, then I needed to fit in, and that meant I needed to spend some money and pretend to be interested in whatever the fuck everyone else was interested in at all the separate stations.
I moved toward the closest cluster of people and pushed my way to the front, so I could see what everyone was watching. As soon as I elbowed my way past the last few people, I saw what had arrested everyone’s attention.
It was a goddamn gladiator fight.
I had heard about them from my father, but I had never actually seen one in person. Supposedly, the elves had started the tradition of gladiator fights as a way to keep the humans in check. They would capture the strongest humans and then force them to fight each other to keep them in submission and get rid of any number of humans who might otherwise be a threat to the empire.
Of course, after the elves had such success with the human gladiator fights, they started to throw other races into the mix just for fun, so sometimes, they pitted halflings against each other, sometimes just dwarves, sometimes dwarves against halflings, and sometimes halflings against humans.
The two fighters in front of me now were a human and a dwarf, and even though they seemed mismatched, they also each seemed able to hold their own. The human was shorter than most, but he was easily as broad through the chest as the dwarf was, and since they were both shirtless, it was easy to see how well-muscled they were from years of fighting.
Neither fighter was armed particularly well, so it looked like the fight had been going on for some time. They each had a sharp rock in one hand, and the human had a short length of rope that had jagged pieces of glass embedded into it. Every now and then, he was able to whip it forward and graze the dwarf’s skin, but the dwarf was faster than he looked, so he got in a quick punch in return almost every single time.
When the human tried to whip him again with the glass-edged rope, the dwarf lunged to the side and dove at the opening the human left. The dwarf rammed the sharp rock in his fist into the man’s side just underneath his ribs, and just as blood started to ooze out, the dwarf danced backward and out of the human’s reach again.
Half the crowd booed as the human reached back to see how bad the wound was, but the other half cheered, and I watched as money started to change hands all around the circle. Elves and dwarves put down bets on the fight right alongside humans and halflings, and I guessed that watching two people beat each other to death was enough to forget all about differences in race, at least for a few minutes.
“If you’re trying to figure out who to put your money on,” a halfling said beside me, “you really ought to bet on the human.”
“And why is that?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s not because he’s one of your kind,” the halfling said. “I’ve been watching him for months, and he hasn’t lost a fight yet.”
“Just months?” I raised an eyebrow. “That’s not very long, is it?”
“In the gladiator world, that’s a fucking lifetime,” the halfling laughed. “I mean, sure, there are some fighters who’ve been around for years, but there’s sure as hell not a whole lot of them.”
“What happens if he loses?” I asked as I watched the dwarf smash his sharp rock into the human’s thigh.
“Then I’m out a lot of damn money,” the halfling growled.
“Is this a fight to the death?” I asked.
“That depends on the referee,” the halfling said as he pointed to a night elf on the far side of the ring. “Sometimes, they pull them off before it’s too late, so they can fight again later, and sometimes, they just let them go until it’s over.”
“Good to know,” I muttered.
Based on the cold smile on the night elf’s face, I guessed that this referee wouldn’t shy away from watching one or both of these fighters die.
This was certainly one way to throw a party.
“Can I put you down for anything?” the halfling asked.
“No, I’m alright for now,” I said as I saw the human ram his own sharp rock into the dwarf’s ear. “I’ll need to watch a little bit more to really get a feel for it.”
“Suit yourself,” the halfling said with a shrug. “But you’ll have to wait for the next fight, or go to one of the other rings. This fight’s just about over.”
“How can you--” But I didn’t get a chance to finish my question.
Just as the blood started to pour out of the dwarf’s ear where the human had struck him, the human gladiator dropped both his weapons and tackled the dwarf to the ground. The human tugged his opponent’s beard to the side and then bent over his neck, and when he popped back up, he held the dwarf’s whole bloody ear in his mouth, while the dwarf howled beneath him.
Immediately, I looked at the ref to see if he would do anything, but the night elf just smiled and kept watching. As the crowd continued to cheer him on, the human spat out the dwarf’s ear, slammed his fist into his opponent’s temple, and then reached for the sharp rock that he had tossed aside earlier.
He raised it and brought it down on the side of the dwarf’s head, and more blood sprayed through the air. The dwarf was quieter now, but even though his legs still tried to kick at the other gladiator, the human didn’t even seem to notice. He just raised the rock again and looked around the crowd for approval as he prepared to bring it down on the dwarf’s skull again.
I turned and slipped back through the crowd before I saw the human finish him off, but it didn’t stop me from hearing the squelch of the dwarf’s brains as the rock finally broke through the last layer of his skull.
It seemed like such a fucking waste.
I knew that the gladiators didn’t have much choice about what they did since most of them were slaves, so they did whatever was necessary just to survive. But I still couldn’t help but think what a stupid waste it was to fight each other, when what we needed to do was turn on the elves that made us all fight for leftover scraps in the first place.
Our overlords had us convinced we were at war with each other, instead of with them.
I took a deep breath and moved toward another cluster of party-goers. I needed to just focus on one thing at a time, and right now, my priority had to be getting new clients for our whiskey. I couldn’t stop the gladiator fights, and I couldn’t overthrow the elves all in one night, but the least I could do was find more customers so we could earn more coin and get more power.
My game was long and slow, but I dreamed it
would work.
I knew there was another gladiator ring somewhere at the party, but when I didn’t see it, I guessed it must be on the side of the room where Dar and Penny had gone. I passed by a slave auction close to the band’s platform, and it looked like there were as many gladiators for sale as there were house servants.
Since the auction was so loud that it was almost impossible to hear anything except for the auctioneer, I kept moving until I found a cluster of gambling tables. The people around the tables were even more well-dressed than the rest of the party-goers, so it was clear that they had some real money. They all wore dyed silks and elaborate elven hairstyles, even the dwarves and halflings, and they all put so much money down on the tables that it would have paid for a year’s worth of food back home.
This was exactly where I needed to be.
I just watched the game at first to see how it was played, but it didn’t look complicated. It seemed like a game of chance more than strategy, so I wasn’t eager to waste my money, but I knew that I would have to bet something if I wanted to stay at the tables and strike up a conversation with anyone.
Before I could decide how much money to put down at first, I felt someone slip their fingers into mine, and I looked down to see that Ava had suddenly appeared beside me.
“You’re sneaky,” I said with a smile. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” the blonde assassin replied, “but I need you to come with me. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“No, I was just getting started, but it can wait,” I said. “What do you need?”
The beautiful blonde didn’t answer, and instead, she just pulled me through the crowd toward one of the back hallways. As soon as we passed into it, I saw that it led to the kitchens, but that wasn’t where we were headed.
Ava glanced up and down the hallway to make sure we were alone, and then she pushed open a small door in the middle of the hall.
“Where are we--” I started.
But the blonde just pulled me inside, shut the door, and locked it behind us. The moment we were alone in the small room, my amulet started to glow blue around my neck to give us a little light, and I saw that we were inside a storage closet filled with mops and buckets, serving trays and extra glasses, and several empty shelves, too.