The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) (24 page)

“Could it be the work of an insider?” asked a tanned man whose face looked more like that of a weather-beaten sailor than a thief. “After all, it was you, Elaine, who provided the lead for Lucius’ disastrous operation at the docks.”

“You dare accuse me!” Elaine spat.

A hand slapped the table, bringing all attention to Magnus. “I will not have us fighting each other!” he said, eyes flashing dangerously, challenging anyone to make another charge of treason. For a few seconds, the Council was quiet.

“Then we must hit back,” Nate said. “And hit back hard. We cannot just roll over and let them take our operations from us. If they tried to take out Caradoc, Magnus, they are deadly serious. Striking at a lieutenant is unheard of! Who will be next? One of us? You?”

“There will be blood in the streets,” someone muttered.

The Council broke down into bickering parties, some wanting to wipe out the Guild in a single night of violence, others supporting the idea of another parley in an attempt to discern the Guild’s true intentions.

Clearing his throat, Magnus brought the arguments to a halt. “Reluctant as I am to admit it, Nate has the truth of it. Right now, we are just waiting for another arrow from the dark to strike one of us down, and who knows what our foot soldiers will face on the streets as they go about their work. We
do
need to demonstrate that we will not roll over. More than that, we must show the Guild that we can strike them where it hurts the most.”

“We go for Jewel?” Nate asked, a little doubtfully, and Lucius understood his hesitation. He was not sure which of the Hands would be capable of accomplishing that goal.

“We go for the merchants’ quarter,” Elaine said flatly. “Disrupt their protection rackets, squeeze their main source of revenue. Starve them of gold.”

Magnus nodded in appreciation. “Your strategy does you credit, Elaine,” he said. “That is how we start. If they are trying to take the docks from us, we will flood the merchants’ quarter with our own men, making it impossible for them to operate.”

“If I may?” Lucius asked. Feeling a little foolish, he ploughed on. “If we go in mob-handed, someone, perhaps a great many, will die. It will be the start of an all-out war.”

“Well, that is what we are discussing here,” Nate said, a little contemptuous.

“Let him speak,” Magnus said, raising a hand.

“We can be smarter than that,” Lucius said. “We rough up their collectors – giving our men strict instructions to spill no blood – we fire a few warehouses, maybe plunder a few. Turn the merchants against the Guild by showing they cannot be protected, and make it impossible for the Guild men to fulfil their obligations. Then we pull out, quickly and quietly, and do the same thing the next day.”

The Council was silent as they digested this. It was Nate who spoke first.

“Will it make us look weak, a half-cooked response to the start of a war?”

Magnus rubbed his chin in thought. “It
is
appealing. We have a chance to make the Guild back down, without doing anything irreversible. A chance to avoid all-out war.”

“And we can always turn up the heat later, if it does not seem to work,” Elaine said, adding her support to the idea.

“Right, we give it a try then,” Magnus said, nodding. “We send six teams in, men we can trust not to let their passions get the better of them. Lucius, you will head one of the teams, seeing as this was your idea. You get to share the risks.”

Lucius bowed his head once to show his acceptance. He knew this was a chance to shine. He just hoped they did not meet anything unexpected, for a second disaster that cost the lives of thieves might well put him on the hit list of their friends.

S
QUEEZING THROUGH THE
stacks of large wooden crates marked with a Vos brand proclaiming they were filled with Malmkrug liquor, Lucius nodded at Lihou, who was laying a trail of oil on the warehouse floor. The young thief, like him, had recently been elevated from the ranks of the pickpockets, and he had the unnerving feeling the lad looked up to him.

The warehouse belonged to one Dietrich Schon, a merchant known to have extensive business interests in Turnitia and who was a fully paid up member for protection from the Guild. This evening, Lucius intended to show him that the gold handed over for a quiet life of business and profit was only so much waste.

As they made their way back to the warehouse’s loading bay, Lucius and Lihou were joined by other members of their small team
–
Ashmore, Teton, and Judi
–
all trailing their own line of oil from other stacks. Looking up at the wooden pillars, supports and rafters of the building, Lucius could not help smiling. Most of the warehouses in the merchant quarter were new constructions, many of the originals having been destroyed by Vos when the army had entered the city as part of its reign of terror. These new buildings were designed to be large, cheap and quick to construct, so the Vos merchants who had all but paid for the invasion could start business as soon as Turnitia was pacified. This meant they had been built entirely of wood
–
this fire was going to be huge.

The team continued to pour oil from their leather flasks, joining their lines just outside the wide door that led to a street lined with other warehouses.
Phase one of the plan complete
, thought Lucius. Now he just had to wait.

Across the merchant quarter other Night Hands were at work in their teams. At least one other was firing warehouses, though no glow on the skyline had yet made itself visible. Others were paying personal visits to merchants staying in wayhouses or taverns, encouraging them to do business elsewhere or otherwise be forced to pay protection money to the Hands. Another team armed with clubs and saps was actively hunting down collectors from the Guild, intending to convince them they were working in dangerous territory.

Lucius had thought he could kill two birds with one stone, and so he and his team waited until their final member, Banff, appeared, with three Guild collectors in tow. Banff had been brought up from the pickpockets at the same time as Lihou, and Lucius had taken advantage of this, gambling that no one in the Guild would recognise him as a Hand. It had clearly worked.

The Guild collectors were clearly taken aback when they realised they were outnumbered, but bravado carried their leader forward.

“This is private property,” he said, eyeing them warily. “Be off with you!”

“This property is under our care now,” Lucius said, adopting a polite tone to mock the collectors. “We have a message for you to take back to your masters in the Guild. The first part is this; your time here is over. This quarter now belongs to the Hands.”

“Arrogant son of a whore,” muttered one of the collectors.

“The second part of the message is this,” Lihou said, striking his tinderbox and igniting a rag whose end had been doused in oil.

Lihou glanced back at the collectors, then grinned as he threw the burning rag into the pool that had formed from the joint trails of oil that ran through the warehouse.

“Oops,” he said, smiling.

The flame guttered for a moment, then flashed as it greedily consumed the oil. Fire swept out in four lines that shot straight into the warehouse. The look on the faces of the collectors was almost comical as they realised, finally, what was going on.

“You fools!” said the leader. “You have no idea who you have just messed with! They’re going to be coming after you for this.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” said Lucius, keeping his voice calm. “We are pretty sure we know what we are doing. However, there is a third part of the message we would like you to deliver.”

The leader frowned, puzzled, until Lucius clicked his fingers and the rest of his team moved forward, eager for violence. As one, the collectors turned and ran, but they were brought down within a few yards by Lucius’ team, who proceeded to pummel them senseless.

A dull crump from behind told him that the first crate of liquor had been burst open by the flames, which would now be spreading voraciously throughout the furs, spices and other goods of luxury stored in the warehouse. He watched his team go to work on the collectors and, though they were clearly enjoying the job, happy to be able to hand something back to the Guild after having been put on the back foot of late, he was pleased to see their discipline remained. He had warned them to use fists and feet only, unless one of the collectors drew a weapon. The point of the exercise was to frighten them and deliver a clear message. Not kill them in the street.

He had to conclude, though, after watching Judi hiss and spit and curse as she dug her boot into a man’s groin
–
causing him to curl up and start sobbing
–
that perhaps the use of a dagger might have been more humane.

Seeing the collectors had taken enough punishment or, at least, understood the message, Lucius gave a low whistle. His thieves stood up from their task, all breathing heavily from the exertion. As they hurried down the street, leaving the scene, the open doors of the warehouse began to glow with the orange light of the flames inside as they took hold. It would be a few more minutes before the fire swept through the rafters and became visible to the whole city, but Lucius knew the place was already doomed. Even if a Vos patrol happened by now, it was too late; the only question was whether they would be able to save the warehouses either side.

“What’s next, sir?” Lihou asked as he trotted alongside.

Lucius smiled as he drew a rolled parchment from under his tunic. “No need to call me sir, just Lucius will do.” Consulting the parchment he nodded. “The Three Springs tavern. That is where our merchant, Mr Schon, is staying for the next week as he tries to sell what remains of his stock.”

“There’s not much profit in ashes,” Judi said.

“True. And less in doing business with the Guild, as we shall prove tonight.”

The Three Springs lay just a few streets over from the warehouse and was one of several establishments devoted to visiting merchants who could not bear to be far from their goods. No one else would visit a tavern nestled deep within the warehouses, so such places also formed a natural forum for negotiations and deal making, where traders could talk shop without being disturbed. There were also other pleasures available to those rich enough, even some that could technically be described as illegal in other parts of Turnitia. It was all part of a specialised service.

As they approached the small building, its two floors and narrow frontage looking faintly ridiculous as it nestled between two giant warehouses, Lucius spotted Gunnison and his team coming from the opposite direction. Gunnison waved anxiously at them, and then dove into a narrow alley that lay between two warehouses.

Motioning his team to follow, Lucius trailed the veteran thief. Short, wiry and with a pointed face some might describe as rat-like, he had always thought Gunnison the archetypal rogue. The image most people saw in their mind when thinking of a burglar or pickpocket.

Gunnison gestured him to come closer as he crouched. Joining him, Lucius gave a quizzical look.

“Thought we might find you here,” Gunnison said, his eyes constantly darting back to the street they had left.

“What’s wrong?”

“The Guild has reacted far quicker than we thought. They’ve got men on the streets hunting for us.”

“Yeah, we saw them,” Lihou said cockily. “Gave them a right kicking, we did!”

Ignoring him, Gunnison spoke only to Lucius. “Armed men. We saw Wade’s guys get hit. He got away, but left two of his men – killed or captured, I don’t know.”

Lucius sighed. “We should pull out, abandon this evening’s operations.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Gunnison agreed.

“What? We can handle them, sir,” Lihou said. “There’s more of us here, I’ll bet.”

“We are not set up for this,” Lucius said, grabbing his arm. “We’ve already lost two men because we were not prepared for this kind of response. It is too dangerous to continue.”

“Besides, if we have running battles in the streets, the guard would be on top of all of us before you could sneeze,” Gunnison said. “Keep your team together, Lucius, but we’ll make our own way back to the guildhouse. Magnus will know what to do.”

Nodding in agreement, he watched Gunnison and his men leave. Before he disappeared into the twilight gloom, Gunnison turned back to Lucius and said, “Looks like the Guild means business after all.”

Leading his team down the opposite end of the alley, Lucius poked his head out into the next street, carefully looking up and down the quiet warehouses to make sure the way was clear.

“Come on,” he said. “If you see any trouble, run back to the guildhouse. I don’t want any heroics tonight.”

They padded up the street, moving slower than Lucius would have wished but staying within the shadows of the tall buildings as they went, all but invisible. A patrol of Vos guards marched from an adjoining road, causing them to double back a short distance, and skip between two warehouses to take a parallel street out of the merchant quarter.

Lucius heard shouts in the distance as the burning warehouses dotted around the quarter began to be noted and men rushed to douse the flames. He became more confident then, as he knew the Vos guard would be drawn to the disturbances, likely giving his team a free run all the way back to the guildhouse.