Lucius was alone. Narsell and Taene lay still ahead of him, the latter barely recognisable after having been all but torn apart by the Guild men. He knelt down beside Magnus, hoping beyond hope that he would still feel a pulse in the guildmaster's veins. Magnus, however, had already left.
CHAPTER 16
Upon his arrival, the guildhouse erupted into turmoil. Lucius had entered the building, his face betraying no emotion other than a hard, frozen shock. Taking a place in the common room, questions and accusations rolled over him like the gigantic waves pounding at the harbour defences but, like the monolithic breakers that stalled the ocean, he remained immovable.
The absence of Magnus, Taene and Narsell spoke volumes, and every thief present knew something had gone tragically wrong. Without explanation from Lucius, rumour and paranoia ran rampant, with scare stories growing ever more fantastic and yet all the more plausible for it. Within a few minutes, there were a good number of thieves who believed the Vos guard had marched onto the streets with lists detailing all their names, and were seeking to murder every one of them.
Calm was not restored until Elaine entered the common room and, upon seeing Lucius, she ordered everyone to leave. Many seemed ready to protest her authority now the guildmaster was dead, but her withering look broke any resistance.
Sitting opposite Lucius, she stared across the table at him, the silence of the empty common room seeming almost deafening to him. She reached out to touch his hand and asked him what had happened. Haltingly, he told her. The finding of Sebastian and the alliance forged between thief and beggar. The presence of the Vos guard on the streets, and the ambush by Guild men.
Jewel. Terrible, deadly Jewel.
He fell silent when his tale was complete, and Elaine had no words. They sat together, in silence as they brooded and mourned, contemplating the loss of their guildmaster and what the Guild would now do to finish them off.
Lucius found his own melancholy a little puzzling. He had liked Magnus, of course — who hadn't? He had been a good leader, quick to spot talent and loyalty, and ready to reward both. What Lucius had not counted on was how much the Night Hands had become his new home and family, how much Magnus had really meant to him.
Part of the hurt, he knew, was his own failure to stop the assassination, and now anger boiled within him too. He clung on to that feeling knowing that in the trials ahead, it would prove useful.
Elaine reached across the table to touch him again, this time shaking him firmly out of his darker thoughts.
'Pull yourself together, Lucius,' she said. 'Magnus trusted you, and so I must too. We are about to fall apart, and we need all the strength we can muster to stop us breaking.'
He looked up at her mutely for a moment, then nodded.
'There will be a meeting,' she said. 'It will be chaotic, so be prepared.'
Elaine had not been wrong. With the Council decimated and Magnus gone, anarchy began to take hold within the Night Hands. The council chamber barely contained the riot as the voices of dozens of thieves, all packed into the inadequate space, competed with one another to be heard.
The remaining Council took seats around the table; Elaine, Wendric, Nate, and now Lucius. Some of the thieves forced to stand raised objections to Lucius' presence at the table, but a sharp word from Elaine silenced their criticisms.
Grennar was also at the table, at Lucius' side, and her transformation was remarkable. No longer a young beggar girl wreathed in rags, she sat straight and appeared utterly confident. Dressed in a tight fitting blue gown, she might have been the daughter of a wealthy city official. Most stunning was her face; sharp, lightly freckled, once clean it revealed a girl of perhaps no more than fourteen. Her young age was a great surprise to the Council, some of whom had wondered out loud whether the beggars were taking them seriously. However, Magnus' posthumous endorsement of the alliance proved sufficient for them to invite her to the table.
Before the table, other members of the Hands jostled for position, seeking to get themselves heard. Each with a different idea of how the guild should continue, or not. Of how they could take instant vengeance, or not. One viciously planted a dagger into the table, promising that if the Council were too weak to take the fight to the enemy, others were not.
The overall mood, however, was one of despondent failure, a feeling that the time of the Night Hands was at an end. Most expected the guild to be disbanded in this meeting.
Clearing his throat, Wendric silenced the bickering thieves and all eyes turned toward him.
'As you will have all heard by now, Magnus has been slain by the Guild. The Council has heard Lucius' explanation of what happened, and we are satisfied that he is in no way at fault.' At this, Lucius heard someone mutter at the back of the chamber, but he did not catch what was said, and Wendric ignored the interruption. 'It was a calculated ambush aided, in part, by the Vos guard. It would have taken a small army to save Magnus. The guildmaster knew the risks when he left this place to forge a new alliance. It is now our duty to continue in his footsteps, to lead the Night Hands to become the kind of organisation for thieves that he always envisioned.'
'Well, what's the point?' cried one thief, an old man whose hands shook as he spoke. 'We're beaten. With Magnus and God knows how many others gone, the guild is broken!'
'You thinking we should all just roll over and join Loredo, is that it, Hengit?' called out another.
'We split up!' Hengit said, smacking a fist into his palm. 'We all go independent. The Guild will never be able to track all of us!'
'Oh, they will,' Elaine said, bringing attention back to those around the table. 'You can be sure of that. They will track each one of you down and either force you to join their Guild or kill you. If we divide our strength — '
'What's left of it!'
'Yes, Hengit, what is left of it,' Elaine said, her anger directed solely at the old thief for a moment. 'If we break up the Hands now, we all die. Or, worse, work for a pittance under Loredo. You think he will just welcome you with open arms? He will mistrust all of you, your careers will be broken, doing the worst jobs and taking part in the riskiest operations. No, Hengit, you are far better off among the Night Hands, however long we last.'
'And how long will that be, then?' called a voice from the back of the chamber.
'That is what we are here to decide,' said Nate. 'Elaine, your hit on Jewel clearly did not work as planned.'
Elaine sighed audibly. 'No. She was spotted on the streets near the merchant quarter but when our agents moved in… well, she either expected their arrival or is far more dangerous than we credited her with.'
'What were our losses?' Wendric asked.
'Total.' Elaine's simple answer triggered a collective intake of breath throughout the assembled crowd. The assassins employed by the Hands were experts in their field, trained killers capable of evading guards, traps and other defences in order to strike a target down within seconds. For a single woman to not only escape their attentions but strike back so effectively was a stunning achievement.
'After dispatching our agents, she was then able to gather her forces and take down Magnus. We don't know whether it was a chance encounter, or if they knew where Magnus was — '
'They knew,' said Grennar. Her voice cut over Elaine's easily and with a measure of grace. In another time, Lucius might have smiled at the ease with which the girl spoke to the thieves but, at this moment, he simply listened as if she were the equal of any in the chamber. In that, he was not alone.
'The Vos army has its own network of spies in the city,' Grennar went on to explain. 'When Magnus was spotted on the streets, word was quickly passed to the Guild, and the ambush set. Once the guard was used to funnel your guildmaster into a predetermined area, there was nothing anyone could do.'
In saying that, she cast a brief look at Lucius.
'So if the Guild has the Vos guard in their pocket, why have they not just finished us off completely?' Nate asked. 'It is what I would do. Why not just launch an assault against this guildhouse and wipe us out in one stroke?'
