War of the Posers

by Eric Ugland

  “Sure, but we’re going to just let more kids get kidnapped?”

  “Clearly the White Hand has few qualms about the issue.”

  “Do they run the city?”

  “They do not run the entire city, no, but they certain have more power than we do.”

  “What about other gangs? Other people?”

  Matthew looked over at Titus.

  Titus scratched his chin. Either he’d forgotten to shave or he was thinking of growing a beard.

  “I don’t rightly know,” Titus finally said.

  “A lot of it depends on the White Hand,” Matthew said. “The Iron Silents are a new organization, almost as new as us. But unlike us, they have a working relationship with another group, and they are clearly bringing some gold into the city. I have no doubts the White Hand is being paid handsomely for children.”

  “Who likes buying children as slaves?” I asked.

  “Carchedon,” Nox answered quietly. “You get a longer lifespan for your investment. Easier to train, less likely they will run away or rebel. Children would be preferable for sure.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You,” Matthew said pointedly, “sadly don’t get to do too much right now. If you want to continue our operations within the city, we need to bring this to a council, and see what the council says.”

  “What council? Wait, there’s like a council of thieves?”

  “Gang leaders. It’s not quite as formal as you are likely thinking. Rather it’s a loose conglomeration of the more powerful underworld figures. I will go, with Titus, to each and every leader we can get access to, and we will present the case as we know it to the powers that be. If we are successful, which I imagine we will be. More than likely, there will be a tossing out of the Iron Silents. Hopefully.”

  “Don’t promise what you cannot deliver,” Titus said, but he was getting to his feet.

  “So I just sit here and do nothing?” I said, feeling the frustration and rage well up.

  “I believe there are several things you could be doing right now,” Matthew said. “You could go to train with your wizard. You could visit the pit and do some restoration work. Or, perhaps, you could find out why you have yet to level up past nine. Or, you could just train. But you have to let Titus and I handle this part.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder and walked out of the tavern, Titus following on his heels.

  “Balls,” I said.

  “Indeed,” Nox replied.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  I wasn’t about to just sit around the tavern waiting to hear how the meeting went, so I went to The Fayden. Mornax followed me, but he understood he had to wait outside. He said he’d wait in a nearby outdoor café, and that he’d appreciate me not trying to sneak away again.

  Which did make me feel a bit bad. He was just trying to keep me alive.

  I went down the long stairs, wishing there was an elevator.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I pushed through the door, wiping the sweat from my forehead.

  “Is there an easier way up and down?” I called out into the hall.

  “Not really,” came The Fayden’s call back from somewhere, echoing off the bricks.

  “Balls,” I shouted.

  “Here for a lesson?”

  “Maybe high tea?”

  There was a fwoop sound from right behind me. When as I turned around, The Fayden was stepping out of a hole in the air.

  He had on grey robes, and a hat pulled low over his eyes. His giant long mustache twisted around his mouth, making something like a beard.

  “Now,” he said, “are you ready?”

  “For high tea?”

  “No, we have a, um, an errand of sorts to run.”

  “We’re leaving the hall?”

  “Yes,” he said with a definitive nod.

  “Hasn’t it been a rather long time since you’ve done that?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why are we—“

  “We are going somewhere related to your leveling issues. Somewhere we can complete an experiment that will, I hope, provide an answer.”

  “Oh. So—“

  “Do not get all sappy about me leaving,” he said, even though I didn’t think I was getting sappy in the slightest. “It is fine. There is very little chance of a random death; I am one of the highest-leveled and most powerful men in the world. I think. Anyway, you will be with me and I am not just saying this for your benefit, dear.”

  “I am not worried about you going out,” Mrs. The Fayden called out. “I go out all the time.”

  “And yet I still worry about you!” he yelled right past me. I realized that it was likely none of this was really about me. I was used to being a pawn in their relationship by now.

  “Have fun out there!” Mrs. The Fayden yelled.

  “Fun? Pshaw,” The Fayden muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing! Nothing at all.”

  He stomped through the door, then slammed it.

  Leaving me inside.

  The door opened and his mustachioed face peeked back inside.

  “Coming?” he asked.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  I did not look forward to going through the door. Mainly because I had just walked down all those sets of stairs, and I didn’t want to see a set of stairs again for as long as humanly (or elfly) possible. But walking through the door, I was suddenly outside the Imperial Palace, quite a bit farther north.

  I turned around, and saw The Fayden closing a green door.

  A heartbeat later, a young woman opened the door and jumped back, surprised to see us there.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Ah, and here we are,” the Fayden said. “But we were just going. Sorry to have stopped on your stoop.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s fine, uh, yes,” she said, more than a little shaken by the whole thing.

  We started walking. I chanced a glance over my shoulder, watching the young woman in her fine clothes locking the door behind her, looking very confused.

  “What just happened?” I asked.

  “When?” The Fayden replied, looking around confused.

  “Where were the stairs?”

  “What stairs?”

  “The ones leading from your hall to, uh, ground level.”

  “Oh, those. We needed to be here,” he said, pointing to a monumental building in front of us. It would not make much sense to walk up all those stairs and then walk all the way over here, would it?”

  “No, I guess not. Just, I didn’t realize that was possible.”

  “Dear elf, nearly anything is possible with magic. The only limitations are power and the willingness to fail.”

  “I thought failure with magic was a bad thing.”

  “Very bad.”

  “So, um--“

  “Therein lies the paradox of magic, you see?”

  He cackled, then realized he was outs in the world, and went quiet. He adjusted his hat and pulled his mustache down before smoothing it out.

  “Right, well, this way,” he said.

  In front of us was a wall of the Imperial Palace, rising high in its white-stoned glory, and sparkling in the sunlight. There was a door off to one side with a singular guard outside. It looked as nondescript as the wall looked fantastic.

  The Fayden walked right up to a guard and tried to reach past the armed woman to open the door.

  “Oi,” the woman said, bringing her arm down on the Fayden’s arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Going inside and downstairs,” The Fayden said. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “I’m guarding this! What do you mean inside and downstairs?”

  “We have an appointment at the dungeon,” The Fayden said, “and I fear we are already late.”

  “Late?”

  “For an appointment in
the dungeon with Keeper Wichel.”

  “Wichel?”

  The Fayden looked over at me. “I am speaking Imperial Common, right?”

  “That’s what I’m hearing,” I replied.

  “Do you need me to speak another language?” The Fayden asked the woman.

  “No,” the woman snapped. “It’s not a language issue—“

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’m trying to tell you, old man.”

  “Old man? Do you know who I am?”

  “I don’t care who you are,” she said. “No one goes through here without—“

  “Bah,” he said. His hand started to wave and I could feel magic building.

  It was a spell I recognized.

  I quickly, and covertly, cast a quick Counterspell.

  The spell fizzled as a little breeze across the ground, swirling some paper and trash around in a little whirlwind.

  “Now why did you do that?” The Fayden asked, turning to face me.

  “Do what?” the woman asked.

  “Because you shouldn’t be doing what it was you were thinking of doing,” I told The Fayden. “That’s not how things work out here.”

  “Bah—“

  “I’m sorry about him,” I said. “But we do have an appointment with, uh—“

  “Keeper Wichel,” the Fayden said.

  The woman frowned.

  “You think that means you get to go in?” she asked. “Just because the old man knows the name of someone?”

  “I know Keeper Wichel,” The Fayden said. “I have known him since--“

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but could you just go ask if Keeper Wichel is expecting us?”

  She was really unhappy about it, but she pounded twice on the door. A peephole opened up.

  “They say they’re here for Keeper Wichel,” she said.

  “Do they have a name?” the face on the other side of the peephole asked.

  “The Fayden,” said The Fayden.

  The peephole closed, and we were left with the angry woman, who was happy to glare at us.

  “Quick question,” I said.

  “Ask,” the Fayden said.

  “Do you have some means to harden rock?”

  “Harden rock?”

  “To prevent, say a prisoner from digging out.”

  “Oh. Well, yes. There are several methods I know to make something like that happen. Is there a reason you ask?”

  “I might have to ask a rather large favor.”

  “The master-apprentice relationship is a two-way street,” he said. “But ask when we are back in the Hall, if you don’t mind.”

  I really wanted to get farther away from the mean guard and her glare. She was just really unpleasant, and doing a bang-up job making it clear she did not like us.

  The door opened so fast that it bumped into the woman’s back. She jumped out of the way, and had her sword halfway from its scabbard before she realized who was coming through.

  I was an older man — certainly not as old as The Fayden, but quite eld all the same — wearing a uniform. He had graying hair, a graying beard, and one milky white eye.

  The woman moved out of the way and bowed at the man.

  “Keeper Wichel,” she said.

  “You,” Wichel said, ignoring the woman and looking at the Fayden.

  “Me,” The Fayden said with a smile.

  “I did not think it could be true.”

  “And yet...?”

  “It is.”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you, um, yes,” Keeper Wilchel said, “you should, uh, come with me.”

  “This is my apprentice. He will be coming with me.”

  “Fine,” Wichel said. “Come on down.”

  It was another very long set of stairs.

  I was not amused.

  The Fayden was completely unfazed by all the stairs, though the same could not be said of Keeper Wilchel. Every few landings, he stopped to catch his breath, and each stop took a little longer. We were going deep into the bowels of the earth, walking on stairs that seemed like they had been trod a thousand million times, enough that grooves were worn into the stone. Each landing had a heavy iron door, imposing and terrifying even to me, someone who knew I wasn’t about to be put in a cell. Finally, though, at the bottom, we got to the largest and heaviest door yet, with more keyholes in it than I could believe. Keeper Wilchel pulled out a ring of keys and went through a rather long and involved unlocking sequence before he shoving the door open. It made a lot of loud creaks and squeaks.

  We were in a quiet outer room with two guards sitting at a small table playing cards. There was one door on the far wall.

  “Gents,” Wilchel said. “Mind taking a break for a bit?”

  The men stood up. “Yes, Keeper Wilchel,” one of them said. They basically ran out of the room.

  “Could you wait out here?” The Fayden said.

  Keeper Wilchel gestured that that was fine, and sat down to look at the two hands of cards.

  The Fayden walked over and opened the door, not bothering to hide his unlocking spell.

  “Come with me,” The Fayden said. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  Chapter Seventy

  Bars split the room neatly in half. On the opposite side of the bars was an unkempt man sitting cross-legged on a pile of straw. There was a foul-smelling hole in the corner, and the remains of a meal on a wooden tray over to one side. The man had long, incredibly tangled hair and a matted beard that seemed home to various gross things.

  “A visitor?” the man asked, tilting his head to the side. His voice cracked like he hadn’t spoken in quite some time, and I noticed that he had his eyes closed.

  “Two of them in fact,” The Fayden replied.

  The Fayden did a little gesture with his hand. Some of the bricks grew up and out of the floor, forming a bench for us.

  “Magic,” the man said, like he’d just heard drops of water after being in the desert for a lifetime. He opened his eyes and looked over at the two of us. “You.”

  “Me,” The Fayden said.

  “I never thought to see you again.”

  “I was not planning on it.”

  “And yet, here you are.”

  “Here I am.”

  “Who is that?” the man asked, leaning forward and pointing one gnarled finger at me.

  “Someone to speak with you,” the Fayden said. “I think he might come from somewhere near you.”

  The man cackled, and shook his head.

  “Not possible,” the man said. “Not possible.”

  “Try him.”

  “He is your trained monkey,” the man said. “And you are here to pry more from me, but it won’t work. I won’t tell you anything else. I shouldn’t have told you what I did.”

  “I don’t care if you speak with me right now,” the Fayden said. “But I thought you might like to explain to my friend here who you are.”

  The Fayden gestured for me to sit on the bench. Then he walked out of the room.

  As soon as the door shut, the man was at the bars, sizing me up. He wore rough-spun rags that were mostly falling apart.

  “Where are you from, elf?” the man asked.

  “New York,” I said.

  The man sniffed, and reached through the bars.

  I leaned away from him, knowing that even a touch could be deadly.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Paris.”

  “Never been, but I’ve heard it’s nice. I would have liked to have seen the Eiffel Tower.”

  “What is that?”

  “What is what?”

  “An Eiffel tower?”

  “Um, a really big metal tower in Paris.”

  “Not when I was there.”

  “When were you there?”

  “The last I recall, 1815. You?”

  “Never—“

  “Last you were in New York.”

  “A bit over 200 years later.”
/>
  “What can you tell me that would make me believe you? He could have told you about New York.”

  “I, uh,” I started, then stalled to a stop, trying to think of something I could tell him that would make him believe I was from, well, Earth. But history was never a great subject of mine. Frankly, nothing academic was really something I excelled in. “Napoleon? I think he was, like, the emperor or something? And, um, Waterloo. He lost at Waterloo. Oh, and he shouldn’t have invaded Russia in the winter.”

  “I tried to warn him,” the man mused softly. “He was always so strong-headed. Overconfidence served him well on certain battlefields, killed him on others.”

  “I heard he wasn’t actually that short — is that true?”

  “Average, I would say. Do those, are there, do they still speak of him in your day?”

  “They did. I think. I wasn’t, I mean, I didn’t pay as much attention to history as maybe I should have. There’s a thing called a Napoleon Complex, about being short and, um, angry. Aggressive.”

  “They got the angry and aggressive part correct. I never spoke to The Fayden about any of this, which can only mean that you are from the lands of my birth. I know not how to feel about this.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Why are you here?” he asked me back.

  “I don’t really know. I think, I mean, I was given the chance to come here, told it was a game. And I didn’t have anything else going on. But I mean, in there.”

  He shook his head, and began to pace the cell.

  “Ah yes, the stories they must tell about me, eh?” he asked.

  “I know nothing.”

  “Nothing? I am nothing now? Nothing?” he screamed the last word, grabbing the bars and shaking them for all he was worth. Which wasn’t much. His arms were horribly thin, barely more than skin stretched taut over bones and ligaments. “I was a legend. A nightmare. I was a monster that roamed the streets of this city and made it my own. It was my hunting grounds, and they could not stop me!”

  “Looks like they did stop you.”

  “I chose to stop,” he said. “I grew tired of the blood and the petulance. Of the begging and pleading.”

  “Pay no mind to that,” the Fayden said, pushing through the door. “He was caught like they all are. Because he grew complacent. Because he was stupid.”