by Alana Serra
Besides, he’d come prepared for this.
“There are four of you I need to convince, so why not four tasks? I can access goods and gossip from here to Esrinas. What’s your poison?”
“Can you really access Esrinas?” Rhia asked, her expression brightening considerably, interest sparking in her dark blue eyes.
“Naturally. I was there not a month past, arranging a shipment for a merchant friend of mine.”
Friend was a strong word for anyone Tanris associated with, but they didn’t need to know that.
“Could you… locate someone? Get me word on them?”
There was a cautious hopefulness in her words that intrigued Tanris. He canted his head to one side, observing her for a moment before he asked, “Some long-lost rival you want to get a read on before they become a problem?”
“An old friend,” she said softly. “His name’s Desmond. He’s about Liam’s height, with a leaner build. Long blond hair. Blue eyes. He was working in the city guard last I… heard from him.”
Interesting. That would certainly be a story to uncover.
“He sounds like a veritable dreamboat,” Tanris teased, giving Rhia a knowing smirk when she fixed him with a baleful stare. “I’m sure I can find him easily enough. Do you want him to know you’re asking?”
“No!” The speed with which she replied was another curious thing to add to the list. “No. I’d rather he not know anyone’s asking at all.”
“Ah, that’s my specialty.”
Wesley moved a bit closer to the Dark Lady, whispering but not bothering to shield his lips. Tanris read them with ease.
Is this the one you saved…?
She glanced at Tanris out of the corner of her eye and he smiled back, not bothering to hide his interest. Rhia just nodded in answer. Interesting. More of a story, and perhaps one he could uncover the other side to. A rare treat.
“And the rest of you? Sourpuss?” he asked, looking at Liam before his gaze moved to Karak. “Puppy dog?” And then to Wesley. “Schoolboy?”
“I’m sorry, are these meant to be nicknames?” Liam asked, arms folded over his chest.
“A work in progress,” Tanris said with a grin and a flourish.
“Still better than ‘princess,’” Rhia shot Liam a look and he scoffed.
There might have been some bickering, some way for the lads to waste their time—as Tanris had all the time in the world, presently—but for Schoolboy’s interest. It shone in his green eyes, making Tanris rethink the nickname already. If he was a schoolboy, he was the one who snuck into the restricted section of the library. Mild, as far as crimes went, but still noteworthy.
“Can you get to Platsia?”
Tanris smiled. “You mean Platsia, the city that cradles the king’s ballsack? That city?”
“That’s the one,” Schoolboy said, the barest quirk of a smile. “Among other names.”
Oh, he knew the other names. But there was a lady present. “I can. Not with as much ease as Esrinas, but it won’t pose much of a problem. What do you need, Schoolboy?”
“Wesley,” he corrected, and Tanris just smiled. “I need you to find someone for me. A girl. She’d be seventeen now. Long, chestnut brown hair, blue eyes. She was a ward of Baron Tremont for a while,” he said the name with such disgust that Tanris’ brow arched. My, these were interesting people, “but she’s been on her own for about six months now.”
He didn’t ask the obvious question because the answer itself was rather obvious. Brown hair, blue eyes, seventeen. Tanris would eat his left foot if the girl wasn’t related to Wesley in some way. A younger sister, likely.
“Adding it to the list. And you?” he turned to Karak, who’d thus far been the hardest to annoy.
Likely because he only seemed to have eyes for Rhia. Pity. The things Tanris could do with a strapping half-orc…
“My clan has been looking for an adventurer by the name of Ezekiel Orcsbane. He’s a member of the guild based out of Helas. He’s responsible for a raid on our people, wherein he killed most of our women and children.”
“Would you like me to kill him?” Tanris asked casually, buffing his nails on his jerkin. “I can certainly do that. For a fee.”
“No.” Karak’s countenance turned dark, those amber eyes glowing. “When he’s brought to justice, I want him to know exactly what crimes he’s answering for.”
“Fair enough. Word of his whereabouts and future plans, then,” Tanris said. “Got it.”
He turned to Sourpuss, but before he could even ask, Liam was demanding. Of course he was.
“I need information on the paladin order in Riverrest,” he said, his jaw held tight. “Specifically on the movements of the Knight-Commander and any lieutenants she’s taken into her confidence.”
“A paladin order? Tricky indeed. You ask a great deal of a ‘common thief.’”
“Can you do it or not?” Those green eyes bore into him, making Tanris shiver.
“I can. I am, in fact, that good.” He grinned at Liam, but got no response other than the hardened look of a man who had a great many secrets.
What a curious group. It certainly wouldn’t be a boring few months until the lot of them were killed by some adventurer or another.
That was fit to be the end of it, and Tanris was prepared to make his leave while he was decently regarded. But just as he was about to speak, Liam cut him off once again.
“Do you know the southern lands as well as those to the north?” he asked.
“Not quite as well, but well enough to fulfill any requests, if you’d like to change yours.”
“No.” He looked over at Rhia before meeting Tanris’ gaze again. “Our Lady has it in her mind to help those who’ve been displaced and otherwise harmed by… anyone, really.” Rhia nodded. “But mostly the guild.”
“I never said—”
“Oh, he’s right,” Tanris supplied. “It is mostly the guild.”
“In your vast experience, is there anywhere more affected than other places? Anywhere that needs to be on our list?”
He could have come up with any number of places. The various orc clans scattered throughout the valley. The gnolls who’d once lived in the mountains. The Arachni who’d kept entire political systems in check for centuries before guild interference.
But only one place came to mind. Rosari. A seaside city teeming with randy sailors who somehow acted less entitled than the adventurers who found their way there, chasing after tales of the kingdom’s most notorious brothel and the women who worked within it.
One woman in particular. Bronze skin. Sleek black hair. Tattoos all over her body. Exotic, the men called her. But Tanris had always known the truth of the many bruises those tattoos covered up.
Pain flared within him, deep and vibrant, an anger following swiftly in its wake. But he tamped all of it down, realizing all eyes were upon him. He flashed another one of his trademark grins.
“I assure you, no place is worse than any other. They’re all equally terrible, and suffering equally. I’m sure you’ll make the rounds,” he said in a mock soothing tone of voice. “For now, I have a few tasks to take care of. If you’ll all excuse me.”
Without further word, Tanris left much the way he’d come in. With an unnecessary flourish. And through a window.
Chapter 16
Even an hour after Tanris left, Rhia still wasn’t sure what to make of him.
He was the very definition of a rogue. There was every chance he was lying to them and trying to get information or something more sinister. She didn’t trust his intentions as far as she could throw him, and neither did her guardians. Liam especially seemed keen to analyze every possible motive he could have.
But like her, each one of them also had something to gain if Tanris was telling the truth. She wanted to know how Desmond was doing. Wanted it more than she’d even realized until the option opened up to her. And while she didn’t have insight into the things the others wanted—beyond Karak, and only
to a small extent—she felt for them. It was becoming increasingly clear to her that they had lives before their pact with Aeredus.
Which… of course they did. She was ashamed to think that they didn’t. That they’d just been born “evil” and that was all there was to it. They’d lived evil lives, had done exclusively evil things, and the only people who cared for them must also be evil by default.
It was obvious they were just like anyone else, with their own share of goals and secrets. Each request to Tanris had made her more and more curious, but Wesley’s was the one that stuck out most. The open disdain when he’d spoken of Baron Tremont, the description of the young woman… something about it made her take notice.
So when the four of them prepared to turn in for what was left of the night, she asked him to stay behind. As another human who also had dark powers he’d presumably obtained from pacting with Aeredus, she felt a strange kinship with the man. She was curious about his opinion and if it would change when they were alone.
And she really wanted to know who this girl was to him and why he was looking for her.
“What do you think of all of this?” she asked once the others had left the room.
She’d long since sat at the war table, a cooling cup of tea in front of her. Wesley sat on the other end, quiet and even more reserved than usual. Another thing that made her want to check on him. She was… concerned, she realized.
“I think he’s an arrogant peacock who’s puffed himself up far beyond his worth,” Wesley said without hesitation, “but I do think there’s some truth to his claims.” His voice grew quieter, more distant as he added, “or maybe I just need to think that.”
“Need to?”
He just nodded, lifting his cup to his lips. Rhia suppressed a shudder, imagining how cold and flavorless the tea within must be by now. Wesley’s grimace told her he hadn’t been thinking when he’d done it.
“Belisan’s tits,” he sputtered, turning his head to cough. “Ugh. It was bad enough when it was still hot.”
Rhia laughed, a grin tugging at her lips, a glint in her eyes as she spoke. “Liam has really terrible taste in tea leaves.”
“You’d think they forbade decent tea in his paladin order,” Wesley muttered, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
When he stopped coughing, a tension hung between them, the question left unasked and unanswered. He looked up at her, blue eyes meeting hers. A different shade than Desmond’s, but no less lovely. They were dark. Mysterious. The kind of depths Rhia could easily lose herself in if she wasn’t careful.
“I think it’s worth pursuing,” he said again. “At worse, he’s just a liar and a cheat and we can deal with him if he tries to get one over on us.”
“I’d say at worse, he’s a spy for the guild,” Rhia pointed out.
Wesley’s face pinched, his brow furrowing. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Liam would be over the moon at you coming up with that theory.”
She snorted. “I’m not convinced Liam would be ‘over the moon’ about anything I do. But it is something to consider.”
“A risky move, even by the guild’s standards,” Wesley mused. “And I don’t think we’ve made enough waves yet for them to organize that kind of mission. Besides… he had access to you. He could have killed you with none of us the wiser, and I assume that would be a much easier goal than tricking us.”
There was an edge to his words when he mentioned that none of them would have known. She’d seen it in Karak’s and Liam’s faces. They considered it a failure that they hadn’t somehow known a man who was obviously very stealthy was in Ebonhold. Rhia still didn’t know if she should be soothing their egos, or just leaving it be. She opted for the latter.
“Do you feel the same way about the guild?” she asked, cautiously approaching another subject that had been on her mind.
She’d assumed the person who’d attacked Karak’s clan had been one bad apple. Of course there were people who joined the guild for the wrong reasons. People who just wanted to eradicate everyone who was different from them. But what about people like Meliva? What about the other members of Esrinas’ guild who’d just enjoyed sharing tall tales over some mead?
They were boastful, yes, but they weren’t… evil.
“You mean do I think the guild abuses its notoriety and never looks into the matters they’re asked to handle before they go on genocidal rampages?” Wesley asked, eyeing her carefully.
Well. She had her answer, then. Rhia pushed out her chair and stood, turning away from him. She moved to the window, arms wrapping around herself as she looked out to the courtyard that was empty save for a hare who was poking its nose through the clover that sprang up from the barren ground.
Even in a place like this, life just existed. That hare would likely have come here with or without her presence.
“I wanted to join them,” she found herself admitting. “I wanted it more than anything in the world.”
“Why?” Wesley asked, the question not filled with the condescension she would have expected from Liam.
She turned back to him, saw genuine concern and curiosity in his features, and decided to be honest.
“I grew up a nobody. Less than that, honestly. I was just property to most other people, with no real value beyond what I could do for them. I had no agency, no choice in anything that happened to me. No ability to go anywhere or do anything at all.”
Her arms hugged more tightly around herself. She hadn’t realized it, but living so far from Esrinas now, there weren’t memories lurking around every corner. She could have let herself forget the horrific things she’d endured. She wished she had.
“But here were these people who could go where they pleased, do what they wished. Everyone respected them, celebrated them, loved them. They were skilled at what they did and made a living I could only dream of. It was so far from my reality that it felt like a complete fantasy some days, but one I desperately wanted to be real.”
Before Desmond, it was the only thing that pulled her through the hardest times. She honestly might never have even bonded with him if not for the mutual adoration of the guild.
“I understand that,” Wesley said softly. “It was the same for me with the Grand Magi. I wanted so badly to be one because I thought it would change everything for my family.”
“Then you understand why I’m having trouble believing that the guild as a whole is… evil?”
He gave her a sad smile and stepped closer. She could smell a familiar, almost comforting scent on him, and realized that he didn’t trigger her instinct to curl up and hide the way most men did. None of her guardians triggered that instinct. Not even Karak.
“Rhia.” He spoke her name so softly, with such a desperate edge to it that she couldn’t breathe. “You can’t look at things as strictly good or evil. The world just… doesn’t work that way. I know you know this.”
“I know it’s more complicated than that,” she admitted.
He stepped even closer, his presence not bearing down on her, but almost seeming to wrap around her consciousness. “Do you think I’m evil? I made a pact with a Dark God to receive powers beyond what I would have ever learned as a magus. I used those powers to hurt people.”
Darkness cast over his expression, making his eyes hard to read.
“I believe whatever the reason, you didn’t have a choice. I believe the people you hurt deserved whatever they got,” she said firmly, not backing down from his intense regard.
Some part of her balked at that. She didn’t know this man. She didn’t even know why he’d made his pact, and his cagey nature told her she wasn’t going to find out anytime soon. But she felt he was a good man with a good heart. Maybe it was naive. Maybe it would come back to bite her and immediately prove her wrong. But she didn’t think so.
“Some of them,” Wesley agreed after a moment, “but not all.”
She thought of her own powers and how they’d first manifested. Had those guards not been dead, she wo
uld have killed them. Unknowingly, yes, but she would have only been focused on keeping Desmond alive. And even if she had known…
She wouldn’t have done anything different. She would have saved Desmond. Every time, no matter the cost. She should have felt shame over that fact. Disgust. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Looking up at Wesley—so close now that she had to crane her neck to do so—she saw a kinship there. That stark certainty that they’d both done what needed to be done.
“Who did you make your pact for?” she asked in a near-whisper.
He hesitated, and she almost didn’t expect an answer. But he finally gave one. “My sister.”
That was who he wanted Tanris to find, then. She supposed she could have guessed as much.
“And do you regret it?” She held her breath for the fraction of a second it took him to respond.
“Not for a second. Do you?”
There was something almost ruthless in his tone. It called to her in a way Rhia hadn’t expected. Drew her in like a moth to the flame. If this was power, this utter shamelessness in the face of question, this resolve that never faltered… then yes, she could see why people would be seduced by it. She was being seduced by it right now.
And if she searched her heart, she found only one answer to give.
“Not for a second.”
Some deep understanding passed between the two of them. She knew nothing about Wesley beyond this one fact. He’d used dark magic, had tied himself to a Dark God for the sake of someone he loved. He’d done it knowingly, willingly, and without remorse. And in that way, they were bound together more tightly than she’d ever been bound to Desmond. She might not know Wesley’s pain, but she understood it. She felt it, and she felt the power he’d taken back for himself, too.
It washed over her, called out to her own, beckoned her to come closer and partake. Like one of Aeredus’ illusions, it was so tempting that Rhia couldn’t help but respond. Only this wasn’t an illusion. Wesley was here. Solid. Standing so close to her, his breath warm against her face, the heat of his body reaching hers.