Shadowmage

CHAPTER 12

There were no smiles among the Council or the senior thieves surrounding the table in the meeting room. Too many deaths had taken place within the Night Hands, and more than a few were thinking about Caradoc. After all, if someone could strike at the lieutenant of the Hands, how safe were the rest of them when they left the guildhouse?

Various theories had been put forward by Council members as to what was happening and who was responsible, but while few doubted the Guild's involvement, Magnus kept demanding proof. With none of the Council able to provide anything more than rumour, he turned to Lucius.

Lucius was acutely aware that all eyes in the room were now focussed on him, and that not all were waiting for his explanation. He was still, officially, a low-ranking thief within the Hands, and though he had not yet been made a senior, many had taken note of Magnus' obvious favouritism toward him. It was breeding jealousy, he knew, and Lucius was distinctly conscious of being part of an organisation whose members, while overtly supporting one another, were just as likely to settle a difference or imagined slight with a knife in the back.

He cleared his throat as he marshalled his thoughts.

'The Council is correct — the truce has been broken,' Lucius said to them all. He hoped that by affirming the Council's thoughts, he might find a friend amongst them or, at least, make it look as though he were paying his proper respects and not trying to subvert anyone's position. It was a small gesture, but he knew that when the danger to the Hands was over, differences would be settled one way or another.

'Our operation on the docks was disrupted at the Guild's instigation,' he continued. 'And they orchestrated the attack on Caradoc, though I have no information on who exactly was responsible.'

'So it could just be a few troublemakers in the Guild?' asked Nate.

'It hardly matters,' said Elaine, a tall middle-aged woman who controlled the Hand's concerns around the docks. It had been she who had provided Lucius with information on the AllantianVoyager from her paid contacts among the dockmasters. 'Whether it is just a few or the whole Guild, we are still under attack and we must defend ourselves.'

This raised some murmurs of assent from the table.

'Where did you get this information, Lucius?' asked Nate.

Lucius hesitated. 'I cannot say,' and inwardly winced as a collective look of contempt swept the table, but it was halted by Magnus' raised hand.

'He does not need to say. Lucius, for now, has my trust,' he said. That would create a few enemies, Lucius thought.

'Could he be mistaken?' Elaine asked. 'There is always the possibility of another player coming into the city, and starting a war between the existing powers is a good way of getting a foothold. Divide and conquer.'

'We use the information we have,' Magnus said. 'I won't have us jumping at shadows.'

'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 merchant's 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 merchant's 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.

Squeezing 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.