“Mind if I have a go?” Uri said, nodding to where Evelyn remained upon the bed, her face wet with tears. Oric shrugged.
“Get on out, boy. No need for you to watch this.”
The three soldiers gathered outside the house ten minutes later.
“No sign of anything strange,” Ingram said. “Found where they maybe did some digging recently, but the ground’s too hard and cold for me to check.”
“Don’t bother,” said Oric. “We know what they did. Nathaniel’s with their father riding south. If we press hard we can overtake him.”
Uri pointed a thumb back at the house.
“You leaving them alive? They helped kill two of us, tried lying as well. Don’t set much of an example.”
“Leave them all for now,” Oric said. “When we find this Matthew, I want to drag him back to his home so he can watch as we kill every last member of his family. Let that story spread across the north. No one opposes Arthur, and no one dares kill his soldiers. Now ride. No matter what, they can’t get to Felwood before we do.”
17
D eathmask and Veliana toasted their success with stolen wine in wooden cups. They’d killed three of Thren Felhorn’s Spiders before fleeing, and their cloaks had made their guild affiliations clear. As far as both guildmasters knew, they were at war with one another. Given how close the attacks had been, and the overall chaos of the night, it’d be near impossible to prove which had been first, so neither could prove theirs had been mere retaliation.
“Thren’s a cautious, paranoid bastard,” Deathmask said as he sipped the wine. It tasted terrible, but his head pounded, and he needed alcohol, no matter how cheap a form. “He might think something’s amiss, or the attack a bit too blatant for Garrick’s taste. Still, the doubt’ll be there, and neither’s going to be happy with one another.”
“You should hurry back before they wonder where you were,” she told him.
“Quite true. Looks to be another long day. Finish your glass. I want you to come with me, keep an eye out on the guildhouse entrance. If Garrick suspects something, I might need you to cover my hasty escape.”
“As you wish, your majesty,” she said with none-too-thick sarcasm.
They left their basement and hurried to the Ash Guild’s headquarters. With Veliana watching from the rooftop, Deathmask strode inside. He couldn’t have been happier with what he saw. The entire room was in disarray. Pillows lay scattered and shards of glass covered the floor by the bar. Garrick stood trembling at the far end. About twelve Ash members were inside, and none seemed eager to be near their guildmaster.
“Greetings,” Deathmask said, pretending nothing was amiss. “Good to see you survived last night intac-”
“Where were you?” Garrick shouted. Deathmask blinked, and he glanced at one of the other men as if to show how confused he was.
“Running for my life out in the streets, much like every other thief in Veldaren. I stopped by here once, but found the place empty, so I hid until morning.”
Garrick paced back and forth. His eyes were bloodshot. Deathmask wondered how much crimleaf the man had coursing through his veins. His speech was also slurred, perhaps from one, or several, of those broken bottles over at the counter. Drunk and stoned. Deathmask struggled to contain his amusement.
“Spiders!” Garrick shouted, as if none of them were there anymore. “Goddamn Spiders! What is Thren thinking? He think I betrayed him? He think I’d be stupid enough to do that? We had a deal, you fucking Spider, you fucking…fucking…damn fucking Spider!”
Deathmask’s eyes lit up at that. A deal? Could Garrick have been working for Thren?
“Someone showed up about half an hour ago,” offered one of the nearest thieves, keeping his voice low so his guildmaster would not hear. “Claimed that two members of the Ash came and killed several of Thren’s men, and he demanded an explanation.”
Garrick still overheard, and he stormed closer. Deathmask saw how incredibly dilated his pupils were, and he decided his guess was correct. If Garrick’s entire strength and confidence were built upon Thren’s protection, then having that suddenly taken away would probably scare the shit out of him. Deathmask couldn’t wait to tell Veliana. She’d been ready to kill the man before. What might she do knowing he’d sold the entire guild out to the man who’d executed her former guildmaster?
“Serious accusations,” Deathmask said, repeatedly telling himself not to smile. “What did you say?”
“This is bullshit,” Garrick said, waving an unsteady finger in his face. “And I’ll convince him of that. But I want to know what’s going on. Mercenaries by the hundreds running through the street, and for what? And tomorrow night, will they do the same? We need to plan. We need to prepare. Shit. What about the other guilds? Maybe they know what’s going on. We should ask. Someone should go.”
Behold your glorious leader, Deathmask mused, glancing at the rest of the Ash that mingled about. He was a puppet for Veliana, then a puppet for Thren. Yet now the strings are cut, and he can do nothing but collapse.
“I will go,” Deathmask said. “And to the Spider Guild, no less. We should show them we mean no ill will, and most of all, that the survival of all the guilds is more important than our petty squabbles. How many of us died last night? This is now a war, a true war. Let me take that message to Thren.”
Garrick bit his lip, no doubt trying to process the idea in his drug-addled mind. The rest of the thieves looked pleased. Deathmask wasn’t surprised. He’d arrived in the chaos, remained calm, and then presented a plan. This was something they could latch onto, however simple. Let the guild see that he was in control, not Garrick.
“Fine,” he said. “You may speak for me. Be careful, and don’t press if Thren turns you away. Friends. That’s what we must be. Good friends. We’ll teach the Trifect to mess with us. Won’t we? Won’t we? ”
A half-hearted cheer came from the rest of the thieves. As Deathmask left, he caught the looks they gave him, and this time he did not hide his smile. He was a stranger, a newcomer to the guild, but he was still becoming more of a leader in their minds than Garrick. Come a crisis, men and women search for stability. Let them see that in him.
When he stepped out to the street, he looked to the rooftop for Veliana, but she was not there. Odd. Had someone else spotted her? He approached that same building, looped around to its back, and then climbed up. He expected Veliana to be lying there, perhaps bored or asleep. Instead, no one.
“Vel?” he wondered aloud.
Then he saw it, a single streak of blood. He followed it to an alley, and when he peered down, he saw Veliana kneeling over the body of a fallen man. Deathmask climbed down to find her bandaging the man’s wounds.
“What the Abyss is going on?” he asked.
“It’s him,” she said, not at all surprised by his arrival. “It has to be. I fought him once, years ago, but who else might the Watcher be? It’s Aaron…Thren Felhorn’s son.”
Deathmask’s mouth dropped, and every plan whirling through his head rearranged itself to match this new set of circumstances.
“Take him,” he said. “Hurry. We have so much to discuss.”
*
Z usa had scoured the south and found nothing. The night had come and gone, bathed in blood and lit with fire, yet she had seen nothing of this elusive Watcher. Too much chaos, too much death. How do you pick one murderer out of a thousand? It was a question she had no answer for. Still, it seemed Alyssa’s desires had been met. Hundreds of thieves died, though many mercenaries had fallen as well. She doubted her master would grieve for their loss. Her grief was saved solely for herself.
Her only strategy left was to hope the Watcher had lain low during the night, knowing he wasn’t needed. Come morning, though, perhaps he’d try to escape, or survey the damage. As she ran along the rooftops, Zusa crisscrossed between the various thief guild headquarters, at least those that she knew. She saw various men pass below her, staying to the alleys and quiet streets, but they all wore the colors of various guilds. From what she’d gathered from men she’d interrogated the night before, the Watcher never appeared wearing any guild colors, only a multitude of gray cloaks and shirts. Still, gray was akin to both the Ash and the Spiders, so to those she went.