Skulduggery 8: Building a Criminal Empire

by Logan Jacobs

  “Then let’s go back to our place, and we’ll see if we can’t get you some different clothes,” I said. “Unless you all like the whole loincloth and sandals look.”

  “Well, I don’t know about the rest of these fuckers,” Leif said with a grin, “but I sure would like to put on a goddamn shirt for once.”

  I led us all out of the private fountain space and back into the thick of the crowd. There was still no sign of Tevian, but it was hard to spot anyone in this horde of people, so I just made sure the eight of us all stayed close together as we moved toward the other side of the main square.

  Just before we reached the street that would take us away from the square and back in the direction of our apartment, Leif suddenly stopped mid-stride, whirled around, and plucked a halfling out of the crowd by the throat.

  “Why the fuck are you following us?” the massive gladiator demanded, and then he squeezed his fingers so tightly around the halfling’s neck that he lifted him right off the ground.

  Chapter 17

  “W-Wade!” the halfling choked.

  I had to look at him for a second before I finally recognized him.

  “Let him go, Leif,” I said, “but thanks for keeping a sharp eye out. Did anyone ever tell you that you might have made an excellent thief?”

  “Or an assassin,” Ava said with a smile.

  “Alright,” Leif grumbled as he released his grip on the halfling and let him fall back to the ground. “I just don’t like people who try to creep up on me, that’s all.”

  “Uh, same,” Penny said. “But who is this guy, Wade?”

  “He belongs to the Thief’s Guild here in the Gold City,” I explained. “Ava and I met him when his leader came to talk to us, and since he’s here now, I can only assume that means he has some news for us. So why don’t we leave the square behind us, and then you can tell us your update, alright?”

  The halfling nodded and followed us all into the next street, and when I was sure that we were out of anyone else’s earshot, I turned to face him again.

  “So what’s your news?” I asked. “I hope that you wouldn’t come to see me if you didn’t have some good news for me.”

  “Oh, it’s very good news,” the halfling said. “I’m sorry I was following you, but I didn’t want to shout your name in the crowd and have everyone turn and look, but you were all moving so fast that I had a hard time keeping up.”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “But maybe next time, try to look a little less creepy about it, or my big friend here might not be so nice next time.”

  “Absolutely, I understand,” the halfling said. “So, my guild leader asked me to come find you and tell you the update about the, uh--”

  The thief paused and glanced at the seven other people around me, like he suddenly wasn’t sure if he should say any more.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “They’re all with me.”

  “Okay, then,” the halfling said with a nod. “So, uh, the update is basically that we did steal all of it. We stole all the temple wine from the next shipment-- down to the very last bottle.”

  I wanted to grab both Penny and Ava and kiss them to celebrate, but I stayed calm, since I still needed to find out about the rest of my plan for the temple wine.

  “Holy shit,” Leif said. “You really mean business, don’t you?”

  “Hell yes, he does,” Penny said with a grin. “Still happy you chose the winning side?”

  “That would be an understatement,” the big gladiator chuckled. “Anyone who hires thieves to steal from the elves, and more importantly, to steal their sacred wine, deserves my full allegiance and support.”

  “It’s fucking badass, that’s what it is,” one of the smaller gladiators said.

  “I appreciate that,” I laughed and then turned back to the halfling thief. “So what, then? What did you do with the wine after you stole it?”

  “Oh, we did exactly what you said,” the halfling replied. “We drew straws to decide who would go outside the city walls, of course, since nobody was particularly eager to volunteer for that job, but in the end, it came down to a human and a dwarf, and between the two of them, they hauled every last drop of that nasty shit out to the base of the mountains.”

  “So they left it somewhere that the wild orcs will find it?” I asked.

  “They did, yes,” the halfling said. “They even took a few bottles a little deeper into the mountains and tried to leave a little bit of a trail for the orcs, to lead them back to the main stash of wine.”

  “And no one saw them do any of this, right?” I demanded. “And no one can see the wine from the city walls?”

  “We’re not amateurs,” the halfling thief said with his nose up in the air.

  Penny growled, and the halfling quickly cleared his throat and then swallowed.

  “I mean, sorry,” the thief continued. “No, we made sure that it’s out of sight from the city. Only the wild orcs should be able to see and smell it.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “That’s absolutely fucking perfect, so here’s your guild’s payment, as promised, and make sure you tell your leader that I’ll be in touch if I need anything else from you.”

  “I will, I swear,” the halfling thief said as he accepted his guild’s payment from me. “We’re happy to do anything you need, Wade, and at any time that you need it.”

  “I appreciate your enthusiasm,” I said. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

  The halfling thief slipped the coins into his pocket and then disappeared back in the direction of the main square. Once he was gone, I laughed and turned back to my friends.

  “You know, I figured that they would manage to steal the wine,” I said, “but I honestly didn’t really think that they would be able to put it somewhere the orcs would find it. That’s fucking fantastic.”

  “Uh, so I know we’re a little late to the party on this one,” Leif said, “but what exactly is supposed to happen with the wine and the orcs?”

  “The same thing that always happens with orcs and alcohol,” I said. “They’ll get drunk and go on a rampage, and that will look very bad for one person in particular, and he just so happens to be an elven general.”

  “You don’t mean… fuck, do you mean General Tevian?” Leif asked.

  “The one and only,” I laughed. “It’s in our best interests if he’s-- well, let’s just say it would be good for us if he was taken down a few pegs.”

  “Fine by me,” one of the smaller gladiators said. “He watched a fight I was in a few days ago, but he wouldn’t put any money on either of us because he thought that was too vulgar. But it wasn’t so far beneath him that he didn’t watch with utter delight until my opponent took his last fucking breath.”

  “That’s twisted,” Leif said and clapped the other gladiator on the back.

  “That’s an elf for you,” I said with a shrug.

  Since the Thief’s Guild had already taken care of the wine for me, I figured that the caterers for the Golden Lake Race must be starting to get desperate for alcohol. After all, the boat race was the next day, so if they didn’t come up with a new alcohol supplier soon, they’d be shit out of luck.

  That just meant I needed to move a little faster than I had already planned to, so I decided not to take us all back to the apartment just yet. Besides, I really wanted to get Ava out of the city before the boat race, just in case some shit really went down, and that meant I should take her back through the portal this evening.

  “Okay,” I said, “there’s gonna just be a quick change of plans.”

  “What do you need, Wade?” Dar asked.

  “I want to go ahead and take Ava back,” I said, but since I wasn’t quite ready to share information about the portal with the gladiators, I wasn’t more specific than that.

  “I’m ready whenever you are,” Ava said.

  “Good,” I replied. “So that means you all will have to take charge of a couple things until I get back, okay?”

  “Yo
u want Dar and me to go talk to the caterers for the boat race, right?” Penny asked. “Flavius should have had enough time to tell them we’re coming by now, so we should just be able to slide right in and offer them a solution to all their problems.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Thanks for reading my mind, Penny.”

  “What can we do for you, Wade?” Leif asked.

  “Dar and Penny will take you back to the apartment before they go take care of our whiskey deal with the caterers,” I said. “And then on their way to the caterers, I’d like them to take you to some of our human friends in town and start to make some introductions.”

  “And these are the humans that you want us to train how to fight?” the massive gladiator asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “You don’t have to start training them just yet, but I do want you to meet some of the humans and get a feel for what you’ll be working with.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Leif said.

  “Alright, any questions?” I asked.

  “No, we can take it from here,” Penny said. “You just get our girl back safe, okay?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said and kissed the redheaded pixie on the cheek. “I’ll take good care of her.”

  After we left Dar and Penny with the four gladiators, I led Ava through the streets of the Gold City back toward the portal in the Hanging Gardens. The sky was dark above us, but the lamp-lighters had already gone around and lit all the street lamps, so our route was almost as bright as it would have been if the sun was still up.

  “You were very sweet back there with Leif,” I said as we passed through the entrance of the Hanging Gardens.

  “I meant what I told him,” Ava said with a shrug. “It’s very overwhelming to have your whole life laid out for you, and then someone comes along and offers you complete freedom to choose whatever you want to do, instead of what everyone has told you that you have to do.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “It wasn’t that long ago that I thought I might be stuck working for Hagan my whole life.”

  “But you freed yourself,” Ava said as she slipped her hand into mine. “And then you freed all the rest of us.”

  “And I would do it all again tomorrow,” I said and squeezed her fingers. “It brought me you, didn’t it?”

  Ava leaned her head on my shoulder for just a second, and then we continued on through the gardens until we reached the portal. After I checked to make sure we were still alone, I held up the compass, waited for the portal to reveal itself, and then stepped through the stones back into our own city.

  After we made our way out of the catacombs and through the human district, I decided that we should stop by the warehouse before we did anything else. Since I was already here, I might as well check in with Skam and Selius to make sure there had been no surprises since the last time I saw them. I would check on Cimarra after that, and then I should still be able to make it back to the Gold City just before dawn.

  When we reached the warehouse distillery, Skam and Selius were there, like usual, but they had been joined by Chef Marver. The old halfling chef had taken the night off of helping Osman at the bakery, and he had decided to lend a hand at the warehouse instead.

  Of course, as soon as Ava and I stepped foot inside the warehouse, I didn’t have much time to think about anyone who was there because the first creature who greeted me was my little dragon, Azure. But as Azure barreled toward me the moment he saw me, I suddenly realized that he wasn’t so little anymore.

  In fact, he was more the size of a small horse than he was a small dog now.

  “Easy, boy,” I laughed as the blue dragon started to nuzzle against me hard enough that he might have knocked over someone smaller. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  “He’s getting big, isn’t he?” Skam grinned.

  “He’s eating more meat than Skam is,” Selius said. “And that’s really saying something.”

  “Watch yerself, lad,” the tattooed dwarf chuckled. “But he’s not wrong about that, Wade.”

  “I guess it makes sense that he’d go through a growth spurt at some point,” I said. “He’s been with us for a while now-- almost since the very beginning of all this, so I suppose he was bound to start to get bigger.”

  “That does leave us with a slight problem,” Ava said. “What the hell are we going to do when he gets bigger?”

  “I know what you mean,” I said as I scratched the blue dragon under the chin. “This warehouse won’t hold him forever, since if he keeps growing at this rate, we’ll have to take off the roof just to get him outside.”

  As soon as I said the word ‘roof,’ Azure galloped across the floor of the warehouse and then took off into the air. His blue wings beat against the still air of the warehouse, and he flew up toward the ceiling, circled around, flipped upside down, and then glided back down to the floor beside us.

  “I see someone’s a bit of a show-off,” I laughed and patted him on the neck. “But you’re right, Ava. If he keeps growing like this, we’ll have to move him somewhere else. Maybe somewhere in the countryside.”

  “It would have to be somewhere that the elves couldn’t spot him and capture him,” Ava said.

  “Yeah, that is a bit of an issue,” I said. “I’ll probably have to end up exploring some of the other cities through the portal room, and maybe one of them will have enough room for Azure to fly free.”

  “I wonder if all dragons grow like this,” Selius said. “He was pretty small for a long time, and then after you left the last time, Wade, it was like he grew a couple inches overnight.”

  “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about that,” Marver said. “I was talking to Osman the other night, and I told him about how much Azure has grown recently, and Osman said it was about time.”

  “What does that mean?” Skam asked.

  “That’s exactly what I asked him,” the old halfling chef said. “So then Osman said it’s because of the way dragons grow.”

  “Yeah, by eating every scrap of meat that we throw in his general direction,” Selius said.

  “According to Osman, that’s only part of it,” Marver said. “Apparently, dragons really grow by eating magic.”

  “How the hell does he know that?” Skam demanded.

  “Well, it makes sense,” I said. “After all, Osman is a djinn, and Azure is a dragon, and that makes them both more magical than the rest of us, so I guess it’s not that much of a surprise that a djinn might know a little something about a dragon.”

  “You mean that makes them more magical than us, but not you,” Ava said. “You have more magic than the rest of us combined.”

  “Well, I think you may have a little bit of magic inside you, too,” I said and glanced at her stomach with a smile.

  “Oh.” Ava turned a deep shade of red at my reference to our child.

  “Okay, hold on,” Skam said. “Can we go back to the part about how dragons need to eat magic to grow? And what exactly that fookin’ means?”

  “Right,” Marver said. “So Osman said that the only way dragons really get bigger is when they eat magic, so whenever Azure is around Wade, that helps him grow because he must absorb some of Wade’s magic.”

  “I told you that you were magic,” Ava said with a smile.

  “But even though Wade helps him grow, what Azure really needs is to eat something magic,” Marver continued.

  “Or someone magic,” I muttered. “If that’s true, then that presents us with a very interesting problem… and possibly an even more interesting solution.”

  “How’s that?” Selius asked.

  “Well, it sounds like the only way to really speed up Azure’s growth is if we feed him something magical,” I said, “and since I’m fresh out of magic beans, that leaves us with very limited options.”

  “I can think of one solution,” Ava murmured.

  “I think I know exactly what you’re going to say,” I said, “but go right ahead.”

  “Do y
ou all remember when Wade had to deal with that elven bastard Belis?” the blonde assassin asked.

  “You mean the fucker who used to feed human blood to his horses to make them fiercer in battle?” Marver swore.

  “Aye, that’s a hard one to forget,” Skam added.

  “What if that’s what Azure needs to grow?” Ava asked. “Not human blood, but magic blood… and who’s supposed to be more magical than the elves?”

  “That’s dark, Ava,” Selius whispered. “I mean, like, that’s…”

  “It might be dark,” I said with a grin, “but it’s also fucking brilliant.”

  “It would sure as hell give the elves a taste of their own medicine,” the halfling kid agreed, but then he shuddered in spite of himself.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “no one will make you feed any elves to Azure. That sounds like a task I’d like to take personal charge of, anyway.”

  “So you think Osman’s right?” Marver asked.

  “Have you ever known a djinn who was wrong?” I laughed.

  “Fair enough,” the old halfling chef said. “I don’t give a shit how many elves you’ve got to feed this dragon. It’s not like they don’t deserve it.”

  “Very true,” I said. “But we don’t need to worry about that right away. I actually wanted to drop by for a completely different reason.”

  “Production’s going strong here,” Selius said. “We’ve got plenty of yeast and grain and everything, so we shouldn’t have trouble filling however many orders you get from the new city.”

  “That’s great to hear,” I said, “but believe it or not, this isn’t about whiskey at all. Well, I guess technically, it started with whiskey, but it’s about the rebellion that we’re planning.”

  “Has there been some progress that we need to know about?” Skam asked.

  “There’s about to be,” I said with a grin. “You know we just formed a human guard down in the human district that we ordered a bunch of weapons and armor for, right?”

  “Sure, of course,” Marver replied. “What about them?”

  “Well, I’m going to leave Ava here, so she can train them and whip them into the best fighting force this empire has ever seen,” I said, “but she’ll need help.”