Belinda couldn't run like Sophie and had always relied on secrecy and deception. Even if she could, there wasn’t much place to run. The Duke’s guards manning the crossing booth might be casual to those departing the Island, but that would quickly change if she made a break for it. The best she could do was keep in character and hope that the man was trying to flush people out with security theatre. Her hopes were dashed when the man stopped right in front of her.
Jason was startled to see silver hair spill out, forming a corona around the thief's dark beauty. He froze in that fleeting moment, recognising her as Jory's celestine friend. She also froze, looking cornered as her eyes darted around. Then out of nowhere, a group of attackers came barrelling at Jason, dressed head-to-toe in black.
“Ninjas?” he said, and they were on him.
He evaded, but the celestine took the chance to run. He had to send her where he knew he could find her.
“Your fate is to suffer.”
She would have to run to Jory if she wanted to stay alive but casting the spell cost Jason as he was overrun by attackers. They dropped him to the ground and gathered over him, laying in kicks. Jason evened the odds and then some by sending a geyser of leeches spraying up into them. The attackers reeled, screaming as they pulled off leeches who took gobbets of flesh with them in rings of burrowing teeth. The watching dock workers backed off, but not so much that they couldn’t keep watching.
Jason got to his feet and held out a hand at one of the men yanking leeches off his body.
“Your blood is not yours to keep, but mine on which to feast.”
Jason siphoned-off the man’s life force to heal the beating they had got in. They all had essences, but he could tell from their auras that none had a full set.
“You won’t survive long if you don’t tell me who sent you,” he told them.
“You can kill us,” one of them said, “but the man who sent us will kill our whole families.”
Jason frowned at that.
“Encircle,” he commanded.
The leeches dropped off the men to form a ring around them. They were all bleeding and poisoned, but Jason used his feast of absolution power on each in turn. It replenished his mana and kept them alive; they would probably survive one bleed affliction. They stood in place, unsure and unsteady. Jason moved forwards and ripped the mask off the one who had spoken. Jason didn’t recognise him.
“The person who sent you will kill your family if you talk?”
“That's right,” he said, scared but looking back with defiance. “You might as well let us go. We won't talk, even if you kill us.”
“Let you go?” Jason asked. “After you attacked me? If you’re not going to talk, then you’re no use to me alive.”
Jory was seeing out a patient when he heard a crashing sound from the back room and rushed back there. Donal, the priest of the Healer, was likewise coming to check the commotion. Together, they found a woman who had apparently staggered in the back and knocked over a rack of alchemy implements as she collapsed. She now lay amongst shattered glass.
“Silver hair,” Donal said. “A celestine.”
Jory’s troubled expression got worse when they turned her over and it was, as he feared, Sophie Wexler. They picked her up out of the glass and carried her into one of the new treatment rooms, laying her out on the examination table. Seeing darkened flesh under the rips in her clothes, Jory cut away her outer garment, revealing a tight sleeveless top and cuts on the arms that weren't from the broken glass. Ominous black veins traced out from each of the wounds, clearly visible through the skin. The wounds themselves were already showing signs of necrosis.
“Some kind of necrotic poison,” Jory said.
Donal was already chanting a spell.
“Make clean that which has been tainted.”
The black veins retreated somewhat, but then visibly started crawling up her arms once again.
“It’s like the poison is replicating itself,” Donal said.
“I’ll work on the poison,” Jory said. “You stop it from killing her. If we can beat it back enough you can try a longer spell.”
Jory started grabbing supplies from cabinets as Donal chanted another spell.
“You’re not going to kill us in front of all these people,” one of Jason’s attackers said.
“Are you kidding?” one of the others asked. “Look at that cloak. He's the cloak guy!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” the first attacker asked.
“The one who killed five adventurers in a shopping arcade in the middle of the day,” the second attacker said. “Not just regular people, but actual adventurers! And you know what they did to him? They promoted him! You think he won’t kill us because some dockworkers saw it?”
Jason, taking in the exchange, turned to the second attacker.
“You seem to know a lot,” Jason said, walking over and pulling off the man's mask. “You won't tell me who sent you?”
“I can’t.”
“Then tell me why. That's your live-or-die question.”
“I don’t know,” the man said, voice almost begging. “I really don’t. We were just meant to slow you down and run, like with the others.”
“Shut up, Jacob,” one of the others barked.
Jason pointed at the man who spoke.
“Mount,” he ordered, and the leeches crawled up the man’s legs and over his body, but did not yet their teeth into him. Then Jason turned back to Jacob.
“By others, you mean the other adventurers trying to catch the thief?”
The man nodded, and Jason started pacing as his brain ticked over. The now terrified attackers watched, unmoving, as they awaited their fate with bated breath.
“How did you know to intercept me here?”
“Keep your mouth shut, Jacob!”
“Screw you guys! I don’t have a family, and I ain’t getting eaten by leeches. There’s some silver-ranker, tracking the thief. Abilities too high for the thief’s friend to spot.”
That would be the one Jory has a thing for, Jason realised.
“Go on,” Jason said.
“That’s all I know. He tracks the thief, then we get a signal and a location if we have to intervene. I don’t even know why they bother with us if they have someone like that.”
“To keep it low-key,” Jason said absently. “Who do you work for?”
“What I told you already gets me hurt,” Jacob said. “Telling you that gets me killed.”
“I know that guy,” one of the dockworkers called out.
Jason turned and flipped him a bronze spirit coin.
“Jack-Jumper Jacob,” the dockworker said. “He’s one of Dorgan’s.”
Jason didn’t know more than the basics about the Big Three. Dorgan was the quiet one, while the ambitious Ventress and the impetuous Silva worked their schemes against one another.
“Things are coming together,” Jason said absently, “but there’s a connection missing.”
“That’s enough, Asano,” a harsh voice said.
A man approached through the crowd of dockworkers. He was human, with well-made, sandy coloured clothes. Jason could sense no aura, but the workers instinctively moved out of his way. Jason was willing to bet the aura he couldn’t sense was silver.
“Your quarry has escaped,” the newcomer said, “and you’ve got all you’re getting out of these men. Time to give up and try another day, Asano.”
Jason tutted.
“She won’t be happy you had to show up in person,” he said.
The silver-ranker flinched. Jason chuckled.
“Fair enough,” Jason said. “I have somewhere else to be, anyway.”
Sophie was unconscious but alive, still on the examination table but now with a sheet over her. Jory and Donal were exhausted; Donal was sprawled in the room’s only chair while Jory was on the floor, leaning against the wall. On the floor were dozens of empty vials that Jory had used to treat Sophie, or that Donal had emptied to replenish his mana.