To Us These Streets Belong

[The Cinderella Man]

((Closed to The International and Amen))


Victor didn’t like the sentries of the Radasanth City Watch. It had nothing to do with being in trouble with the law – he had had his run-ins with the uniforms, but it was usually minor crap, nothing a night or two in the cell and a stern warning didn’t clear up. Well, aside from that stretch he did in the wretched old Furnace over a murder he didn’t commit, but who was looking that far back into the records? Victor was pretty sure that your average sword-totting constable schmoe didn’t, not necessarily because he didn’t have access, but because they didn’t pay him enough to go beyond the call of duty. Wages just about covered the discomfort of wearing armor and the frowned glare, but not much else these days.

So there should’ve been no reason for Padre to feel uncomfortable as he walked through the Watch’s compound. The sun above seemed intent to prove its detachment from the war-torn world below, fighting (and mostly winning) battles with sporadic clouds, remnants of the last night’s rain. It gave Radasanth an almost fresh look, reverting the dusty cobbles and cracked tiles to their original colors and covering them with a sleek humid sheen. Even the fortifications of the City Watch’s fort looked some fifty years younger, dark grey and somehow more formidable, further standing out of the capitol’s vista. The smell didn’t improve much, true; instead of the stench of dry garbage and horse dung you got the stench of wet garbage and horse dung. But there wasn’t much that could be done about that, Victor reckoned, with the amount of people living within Radasanth’s walls. But other than that, today seemed to have the making of a great day, a solid day at worst.

And yet despite all that, Victor didn’t feel very comfortable walking amidst the watchmen. The lawmen always made him nervous. They always looked at you like you did something wrong and they knew about it, like a mother looking at you and knowing you swiped a cookie from the jar before dinner even though you did your best not to leave any crumbs behind. But it wasn’t like he could evade their looks. After all, he was working for them now.

His induction had come rather easily, despite him being an ex-con. The war had drawn most troops away to fight the Rangers, leaving far too few in the Watch to deal with the domestic issues. So the Watch commanders were given permission to recruit outside assistance to deal with the overflow of cases. Which basically meant that half the Watch’s numbers were filled with grubby, corrupt, money-seeking bastards that didn’t have two bits of morale to spread amongst them. And the other half were mercs, like Victor Callahan. Since his acceptance in the Watch as temporary recruit, he had mostly done minor interventions, breaking up bar fights, apprehending petty thieves dumb enough and slow enough to be caught by the likes of the ex-prizefighter, settling asinine disputes, the grunt work. He expected more of the same today. Radasanth seemed to be the world capitol of the irate and idiotic.

“You’re late, Callahan,” a voice stopped the bulky man in his tracks just as he set foot on the short flight of stairs that led to the entrance to the Watch’s headquarters. Behind him stood a man dressed in what Victor believed to be the most impeccable uniform a soldier ever wore. All the buckles and buttons were reflecting the sun’s light with gold, every strap and belt at its place, every crease of the blue fabric just the way it was supposed to be. Even the graying beard on the man’s lined face seemed perfect, as if he counted every hair and measured their lengths every morning, getting them all in line just like his soldiers. Only the feather in the hat seemed somehow out of order, a frivolous detail on an otherwise perfect display of military discipline. He was Leeahn Festian, the Major of the Corone Armed Forces and the Commander of the Radasanth City Watch.

“Yeah, uhm, I got...” Victor fumbled for an excuse. The major cut him short.

“Spare me a bad excuse. You obviously don’t have a good one,” Leeahn said, tapping his feet against the first step, shaking off the mud from his black leather boots. Despite the dirt on it, Padre was rather certain that he could still see his own reflection in them.

“Is the briefing done?” Victor asked, making a weak effort to clean his own boots. Compared to the major he looked like a bum, but that wasn’t saying much. These days he looked like a bum compared to a whole lot of people. His black overcoat was more gray than black, the leather thinning from wear and tear, with patches on elbows and a large one on his back. But it was still a good coat.

“No, I’m just heading there now. But I wanted to talk to you before it began.” Satisfied with the state of his boots, Leeahn climbed the five stairs and nodded in response to the salutes of two halberd-wielding sentries that guarded the main entrance. “Come on, we’ll talk on the way.”

“What about?” Victor asked once they were in the foyer and he caught up with the major. “If it’s about that blacksmith yesterday, he came at us with a bloody hammer. Knocked Willard right out. I had to...”

“Knock six of his teeth out?” Leeahn asked, but there was no reproach in his voice. He merely continued to walk down the corridor at his brisk pace, his face expressionless. “I read the report, and no, I didn’t want to talk to you about that.” They swung around the corner and into what seemed like the main hallway, the hardwood floor giving way to brown carpet that seemed as old as the building itself. Three soldiers passing by them snapped their salutes, receiving another minute nod as acknowledgment from their superior.

“I need your help, Callahan,” the major said. “The brass keeps taking my men, using them as pin cushions for the arrows of the damned Rangers. I’m running low on officers, hell, even on just good soldiers that carry out orders without making an unholy mess. And now they throw us a mission like this.”

“A mission like what?” Victor asked, doing his best to keep up the pace with the commander.

“You’ll see at the briefing. Suffice to say, I need someone I can depend on other than my own men. Someone who doesn’t fancy the Rangers and their rebellion.” As he spoke these words, Leeahn stopped and turned towards his companion, as if gauging Victor’s reaction. There was little to be read from Padre’s face.

“I have no love for those tree-huggers and their Republic, you know that.”

“I guess I do,” the major nodded, seemingly satisfied. “But how far does your dislike go? Far enough to beat someone to a bloody pulp? Far enough to kill?”

Victor didn’t answer immediately, but Leeahn only smirked.

“Come on, they are waiting for us.”

[Amen]

The air in Radasanth was tense, as if an incredible storm were on the horizon in spite of the incessant sun. Marcus Book could never stand cities. Radasanth warred with the Outlander’s Quarter of Fallien for position of Most Hated, and these days the capital of Corone was winning. The dark corners of every major city are dangerous, full of human rats and spiders and worse things, but war seemed to deepen those corners and the spiders were getting fat and bold.

The templar hoped Emien Harthworth saw fit to send him far, far away. And why shouldn’t he? The city was wreathed in loyal soldiers and filled with well-paid state-sponsored thugs. A mercenary should be kept at arm’s length – a sword to the army’s shield. Or, in Book’s case, a dagger.

“Off to see Lord Harthworth, are we?” a man in rags said innocently, picking at his fingernails with a dull knife. His teeth were rotting, and his accent painted him a poor commoner born and raised in Radasanth’s gutters.

Marcus paused and eyed him. “You’re a rat,” he said. It was not an accusation.

“I am,” the rat said, “and you’re catching on quick.”

When the viceroys abolished the assembly and granted themselves complete power over Corone, they saw fit to tap the financial reserves the assembly had guarded fastidiously. In addition to the professional spies and surveyors they had always kept, each individual viceroy saw fit to employ his own vast spy network. Emien Harthworth had his scouts, usually found among the city guard and militiamen. Sivien Arundiel depended on his flies-on-the-wall, informants among the city’s butlers, majordomos, heralds, whores, and merchants. The house rats, however, reported to viceroy Athenry Sergio and came from the beggars, the tramps, the scullery maids, the peddlers, and the petty thieves.

The viceroys were as afraid of everyone in the city as they were of those without, and that evidently included one another.

“I try to adapt fast,” Marcus replied. “I find it keeps me alive.”

The rat smiled. It wasn’t anything Book wanted to see again. “I like that,” he said. “Kindly take a step closer to me, if you would. One of Harthworth’s goons is around the corner there, and I would like it if he didn’t get curious who you’re talking to, yeah?”

When he said the viceroy’s name it came out Harfwoorf. Marcus didn’t want to be any closer to the man and his knife, but he complied anyway.

“Thank ya mighty.”

“What does Master Sergio want?” Marcus said.

“Same as anybody. Bunch of dead Rangers, and two dead viceroys that ain’t him, I bet.”

“From me.”

“Oh, well,” the rat said with a stiff smile. “My lordly patron, gods bless him as long as he keeps blessing me, just sent me with some advice is all. Take a step to the right, if it pleases you. Thanks. Anyway, it is the opinion of my patron that a wise man in the pocket of one viceroy might find it…shit, what’s the word. Prudent. He might find it prudent to do some favors for another viceroy, get it? That way, if you earn the ire of one, you got the love of another to fall back on so’s you don’t lose your head prematurely.”

“As opposed to when I’m supposed to lose it?”

“Being when Sergio wants it, I’d bet. Anyway, he’ll pay you so why not, is the way I see it. Nothing to lose,” the rat shrugged.

“What does he want me to do, exactly?” Marcus said.

“Simply attend a meeting, yeah?” the rat said, and gave Marcus an address and directions. “Well, and do what they tell you to do, of course. Now if you’d kindly go away, that poncy guard is about ready to round the corner and it’s best if Mr. Harthworth didn’t know we had this chat, innit?”

***

The rat failed to mention that the “meeting” was actually a brief with the City Watch, which seemed to be greatly diminished as a result of the war effort. The rat also failed to mention that Marcus was expected. He was growing increasingly frustrated that the viceroys seemed to know when he would accept a task before he’d even contemplated it. Shrewd men, all of them.

Book stood around a table, where a map of the city had been set up with colored pins marking three positions. It seemed he was not to work alone, as there were already a handful of men in attendance and apparently more coming. They all seemed mercenary types, but Book stood out.

Granted, he tended to stand out as a general thing since returning from Fallien. He was sun-bronzed and tattooed, bald, goateed, and his eyes were kohl-stained. He was dressed in horsehide pants, buccaneer boots, and a recently-acquired cotton shirt. And he was big, broad-shouldered and imposing.

And then Victor Callahan walked in behind a man with a commander’s marks, and Book almost felt small and unimpressive.

There’s always a bigger man, he told himself, and nodded his approval.

This might actually be fun.

[The International]

Esme Villeneuve licked his lips as his eyes focused on his wife’s beautiful ass as she bent over and reached into the chest. Alix’s words, along with everything else going on at the Niema docks, were muffled. His head tilted as his face melted into an ear to ear grin. He ran his hazel eyes along every stitching of the black cotton pants that emphasized her firm but well rounded derrière, and as she stood up with the manila folder in her hands, he traced his eyes up her perfect petite shape, along the emerald shoulders that made nourishment out of the sunlight, and around the rose red locks that perfectly framed her crème face. It was the wide eyes of life, still vibrant after more than seven thousand years that were his biggest turn on, despite their condemning gaze.

“Are you done?” Alix said as Esme’s ears tuned back in to reality. She rolled her eyes as she put one hand on her hips and handed Esme the folder with the other. “I’m not repeating myself. You can read that on your way to the Fort. Just remember to burn it afterwards.”

“Hey, I can’t help it if my old lady is hot.” Esme smiled and threw his hands up in refusal to take the information. “Besides I already know what I need to do. I know what our kids need to do. I know what you need to do. It was all my idea in the first place.”

“Yea well just remember who we’re all working for now.” Alix said as she tossed the folder back into the chest and looked across the earthen hued docks above the dark water. “If they don’t think the result of our actions is productive for their means we’d might as well consider this a failed mission.”

“I know. I know.” Esme said as he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her close. “To be honest though, I don’t care who we’re with. What every person in the family is doing will serve our interests in Corone. Benefiting our new bosses is just a convenient coincidence. Now on with the checklist.”

“Rapier?” Alix said as she ran her fingers through his meticulously fashioned short brown hair.

“Check.” He tapped a finger on the sheathed blade at his left side.

“Buckler shield?” She didn’t wait for him to respond. Instead she knocked on it like a door, allowing its steel frame to ring like an Akashiman gong. “Check. Sketchbook?”

“Right in the pocket of my vest.” Esme slapped his hand along the right breast pocket of his Aleraran fashion statement. “That is over my tunic, which is over the Sitayamini Under Clothing Lillian Sesthal gave us. Is that all?”

“Lifeline?” Alix said as she stepped back and crossed her arms. “Please don’t tell me you left it on the ship again.”

“Nope.” Esme reached his hand under the black vest and the white tunic to reveal a violet jewel the size of an average gold piece, which hung on a quaint little chain of irrelevant quality. “I got it right here. Now on to the false flag.”

“Right.” Alix sat atop a wooden crate as she resumed her habit of looking to see if anyone on the dock was listening. “Tell me a little bit about yourself.”

“Okay.” Esme said as he stuffed the jewel back into his tunic. “My name is Erick Vanderbilt, third son of Arthur Vanderbilt. I am thirty five…”

“Ouch.” Alix made a funny face as if she were smelling the putrid city of Radasanth for the first time.

“Thirty seven?”

She pointed her thumb to the sky.

“Damn, woman.” His hands went out in a quizzical gesture. “Just give me the answer.”

“Unless you want to shave, you’re almost forty.”

“Thirty eight. I’m younger than I look…” Esme said as he adjusted his vest and stuck his chin in the air. “And that’s my final answer.”

“Aw. And they said men age better than women.” Alix feigned a sad face by poking a bubble bum lip out.

“That’s the price women pay for ‘maturing’ faster.” They both laughed for a moment. “Are you sure you’re okay hanging out here while everyone participates in our youngest son’s master plan?”

“Someone’s got to look after the house.” Alix turned to look at their timbre mobile home, the three mast sloop with the words The International on the side. This was the first time the ship was taken this far in land via Niema river, but even spies like them couldn’t get by the Empire’s decree to have all boats docked beyond the delta of the river for ‘security reasons’. “Besides I have a line to each of you if I need some company. Now go play.”

And go play he did.

Hours later he found himself at the headquarters of the City Watch, in a tight room steamed by the body heat of a bunch of dispassionate men looking for a quick buck, and worse – patriotic city guards. Just then he wished he were outside smelling the droppings of Radasanth’s residents, and immediately kicked himself for thinking that. His spoiled youngest son, Vespasian, was rubbing off on him. To punish himself he simply stood and endured the putrid male odor in the center of the room where mercenaries and patriots mingled shoulder to shoulder as he fixated his eyes on the map of Radasanth.

“Gentlemen. Gentlemen.” An impeccably dressed man in ceremonial military garb caught the attention of the motley crew. “My name is Leeahn Festian. I will forego any further formalities of title or rank as I am sure none of you give a damn. It is only sufficient to say that I am your judge, jury, and executioner for this endeavor. Should you betray your fellow enforcers, turn tail, or fail to do your due diligence, you will not see your coin. Now let us get to your mission for today. As you can see…”

The Imperial Officer directed their attention to the map. He ran his hand along the azure horizontal tree trunk that was the Niema River. The roads of the Coronian Capitol extended out from their main source of life like the branches of a tree, forking and dividing until they disappeared into the countryside. Three green marks hung from those branches like apples. One was near the outskirts of the city in a borough of townhouses of the wealthy as far as Esme remembered. Another was in a brothel on First & Fifteenth, Radasanth’s Red Light district. The southernmost location was near the docks of Niema River not far from where The International was anchored.

“…You have three targets today. Your seniors among you have been given the details. Consult them if need be, but waste no more time standing here. Time is of the essence.”

[The Cinderella Man]

Once they were all out in the hallway, the officers (two sergeants and a jittery looking lieutenant who didn’t look old enough for a razor yet, let alone a saber) gave it their best to organize the troops. But their best was lousy and half the men under their command didn’t seem overly keen on following orders. They were supposed to split into three teams, but despite being given a list of names, the officers had a tough time getting their squads together. Some wanted to switch squads, and some wouldn’t work with others, and some complained just because those around them did. Victor found the sight... disappointing. He had spent more than half of his life in Radasanth and despite not meeting eye to eye with them on several occasions, he respected the City Watch. They were the grease monkeys of the justice system, shoveling the crap on daily basis so citizens would have a better, safer life. And now, they were diminished to a bunch of snot-nosed ranked men and gritty bastards looking to leech the system for some easy coin.

“Callahan! Callahan!” the lieutenant called out for him, waving his hand from the other side of the squabbling crowd. Victor shouldered his way to the young officer, who was accompanied by a pair of extremely annoyed watchmen in dirty uniforms. “Victor Callahan, right? You’re on our squad. I am Lieutenant Allain Trefell.”

Victor took a quick measuring gander at the two soldiers, then at the squeaky-voiced kid. “Great. Who else is supposed to be on our squad?”

“Uhm...That guy, I think. The bald one... Book? Marcus Book!” he tried to call out, but the constant yammering combined with the utter lack of impact in Allain’s voice resulted only in another snicker from the two guards at the lieutenant’s side. Victor was growing tired of this. Leeahn hired him because he got things done. So it was time to get things done. He reached inside his coat, drew his pistol, blew a hole in the ceiling and alerted just about every soldier in the complex. Even Leeahn popped out through the door of the briefing room, one hand on the hilt of his curved sword. But he silenced the crowd. He got things done.

“Alright, enough of this clucking. The officers are going to assign you to squads...” He didn’t get the finish. A haggard looking man was already standing in front of him, sinewy arms on his hips, twitchy fingers never too far from his weapon belt.

“And who the hell are you, to be barking orders? I see no markings on your lapels.”

“He speaks true.” It was Leeahn, pushing through the forest of bodies, his face locked in a wrathful frown. He stopped right in front of the old war dog. “You report to your assigned squads, or get the fuck out of my sight! That goes for all of you. Quiet down, listen to your squad leaders or I’ll clap you in irons!”

Leeahn’s anger was almost palpable and enough to get all the chicken in some semblance of a line. It was enough for even the flimsy voice of Lieutenant Trefell to be heard. “Marcus Book!” The odd looking bald man came forward readily enough. He looked tough as nails to Victor, and he knew tough as nails. “Brogan Telford!” Brogan wasn’t terribly happy for being called out, the stout bearded man tossing a parting comment of going back to school to his pal before he joined his new detail. “Mycah Downing!” was a quiet looking kid who couldn’t be a day over fifteen with a nicked sword at his side and an expression of false courage. “Erick Vanderbilt!” The elegant man joined the team with a courteous nod directed to no-one and everyone. Victor didn’t like him overmuch. Looked a bit too trig for a merc.

“That’s everyone,” the lieutenant said, pocketing the list inside his pressed blue overcoat. “Right. Well, men, our objective is to apprehend a man called Terry Dugan. He has been accused of treason against the Empire and spying for the Rangers. He works at the, uh, brothel called Saddle Ablaze as an usher. We are supposed to bring him in by any means necessary.”

“Bloody hell! This kid will shit his pants if I fire another round. He’s as jittery as a goddamn junebug,” Victor thought, but all he asked was: “That means dead or alive?”

“The Intelligence Bureau would prefer to have him alive, but deadly force if authorized. Though I don’t think it will be necessary. The mission is classified as low risk.”

“Yeah, and those old boys always get it right,” one of the watchmen added with a snicker. His pal responded with a chuckle, but Allain kept his game face on as shabby and false as it was.

“Let’s get going.”

***

Despite all the bullshit back at the headquarters, Victor still thought it was turning out to be a rather good day. After the serious-as-a-bloody-plague talk he had with Leeahn before the briefing, the ex-con feared the major would throw him into something perilous. But this mission wasn’t looking that bad so far. Sure, he was bunched up with some people he didn’t know or trust, but their task was rather clean cut and chances were they’d be back by lunch with Terry Dugan in tow. Because that’s how it usually went with these things. After all the foreboding talk, you usually wound up with some schmuck who barely put up a good fight. Not that Victor minded. That was easy money, and easy money was hellishly hard to find these days.

Their stroll through the streets of Radasanth didn’t last very long. The headquarters of the Radasanth City Watch were located in the vague belt around the Market District where it slowly diminished into the less reputable Slums in the south part of the capitol. The famous Red Light district was at the very heart of the Slums, and within was one of the finest establishments in all of Radasanth, according to those that frequented it, hell, finest in all Corone. Saddle Ablaze, where the whores were cheap and the wine was cheaper and you got a pint and a fuck for a fistful of coin. The lieutenant brought them to a halt in front of the main entrance, where a lewd (and badly painted) woman was looking oddly excited about riding an equally badly painted stallion. The rest of the place looked dead, though, with no music coming from the inside and no lights breaking through the darkened windows.

“Right. We need to cover the other exits,” Allain said.

“There’s a back exit on the other side leading into the garden, a service exit on the left that leads into the kitchen and a door leading to the basement way back on the right. But that one’s mostly locked,” Victor blurted out, then felt the collective glare of the group fall on his back. He spread his arms defensively. “What? I did some work for the owners a couple of years back.”

[Amen]

This job was getting stranger by the minute. After the chaotic scramble in the City Watch headquarters, Marcus was prepared for Trefell to lose control of his squad before it ever reached the brothel. If not for the support of Victor Callahan, maybe one of the bruisers would have challenged the lieutenant’s authority. As it was, Book felt the big gunman was the real leader here and Trefell was a Watch liaison at best.

After all that tension, the promise of impending violence was almost a relief.

The templar chuckled as the rest of the group eyed Callahan. Some seemed unsure of the man and his apparent familiarity with the famous whorehouse, but Marcus just shrugged one big shoulder.

“I’ll take the basement,” he said. “It looks dark in there and the basement is going to be even darker, and I’ve got the eyes for it. I’ll take the kid if it’s all the same to the rest of you. If it’s cramped down there, I don’t want to be rubbing shoulders with another brawler.”

Marcus slapped Mycah Downing on the shoulder, and ignored the way the boy jumped. Telford chuckled darkly, and rolled his eyes at the man called Vanderbilt as if to say, who let the kid out of his crib?

Book watched the wordless exchange dispassionately, but something familiar about the bearded swordsman gave the templar pause. He knew him from somewhere.

“D-didn’t he say the door would be um…locked?” Downing said, his voice starting off too loud and then softening the longer he spoke until the last word was almost a whisper.

“That never stopped me before,” Marcus said dismissively. “We’ll see you gentlemen inside.”

With that, Book took off around the corner, dropping to a half-crouch to avoid being seen through one of the windows. Mycah looked at the rest of the group slack-jawed, rebuilt his brave façade, and then mirrored the templar’s stance as he rounded the corner toward the side of the house.

The boy found his fellow mercenary way back behind and on the right side of Saddle Ablaze. Marcus was crouched next to a door situated low on the house, with stairs leading down into the side of the foundation. As Mycah watched, Book slowly tried the doorknob so as not to make any noise. He found it to be locked, as Victor told them it would be.

“What now?” Downing whispered.

“We wait,” Marcus murmured. “Listen close. When you hear them go in, I’ll kick down the door. Stay close and keep your eyes open. If this Dugan fellow is here, he’ll probably try to run and this way is secluded. Good chance he’ll come at us.”

“It seems so quiet in there,” Mycah said, almost to himself.

Marcus shrugged. “It’s early. Whores have to sleep too, I guess.”

“I guess,” Mycah said, wiping some sweat from his upper lip.

[The International]

Esme scratched his head as he looked at the two story brick building. He smiled as he started for the narrow alley on the left side of the building. “If anyone wants some action, no pun intended, they can come with me to the service exit.”

“How do you figure, Prince?” The voice of Brogen Telford was just as hefty as the man who possessed it.

“The kitchen workers of an establishment like this one are often the first to come in to prepare for customers and last to leave because they have the most to clean up.” Esme didn’t bother to turn around to look at the sour man. “They also have a tendency to keep the door closest to them open so they can throw scraps out. It’s likely to be our easiest point of entry…” And the most dangerous, Esme thought to himself with a crooked grin on his face.

The pounding of boots on the gravel street came from behind as a set of sausage fingers patted him on the back. “I like action.” Brogen mumbled as he continued past Esme.

Surely enough the smell of rot and decay filled their noses the moment the faint shadow of the alley hit them. The afternoon wind that cut around the back corner of the building didn’t make things any better. Esme began his raiding routine as he began to whisper in his native Raiaeran tongue, and as a result the air around him became thick. The big boned brute in front of him stopped and turned, his leather and straps swinging along with him.

“’The fuck are you doing?” Brogen snarled as he shot a wide eyed look at Esme.

Esme rolled his eyes as he stopped his chant. “Praying to Am’aleh. Now keep walking.”

Brogen did so, and Esme smiled behind his back as he resumed his chant. No one ever challenged another’s religion. Even assholes like this guy. They put their backs to the brick edifice as they closed in on what seemed to truly be a hole in the wall. Piles of chicken bones and makeshift contraceptives littered the ground before the service entrance. The spy tiptoed about as if they were bobby traps. He was wearing new boots. The brute in front of Esme pushed at the door. Lo and behold, it was open, but nothing came from the other side but a void sprinkled with the occasional reflective sparkle of a few kitchen tools and… The sangria glow of a brick oven?

“It’s late noon.” Esme said as he lodged his chin over Brogen’s shoulder to look into the kitchen. “Someone should be in there. Yup. This is a trap.”

“No shit.” Brogen said as he shrugged his shoulder to shake Esme off of him. “But what do we do?”

Esme feigned contemplation. “I guess we need to trigger it.” And without warning he rammed the brute with a shoulder, sending him head first into the darkness.

In an instant Brogen’s legs came out from under him as his voice bounced curses off of the dark kitchen’s walls. The tile floor was glazed with a liquid that Esme guessed was flammable. He watched, unable to act lest he wanted to die himself, as a figure veiled by the darkness probed the oven with a wrought kitchen appliance and revealed a flaming log. Without hesitating that figure dropped the log on the floor as if to tell it to sick the trespasser. The flames quickly obeyed, roaring along the kitchen floor and engulfing the fat warrior on the floor. His screams rang in the echo intensive walls of the kitchen. No doubt the rest of the party heard Brogen screech in pain as he writhed about.

“Shut up!” Esme said as he waved his hand over the area. The tiles cracked and the earth beneath them churned about, burying Brogen up to his chin and serving as a retardant for the flames. Esme joyfully kicked the remainder of the flames off of the brute as he waited for the Song Magic to create a path within the pool of flames that was now the kitchen floor. “Those idiots probably think that was me screaming.”

[The Cinderella Man]

There was a lot that could be said for the mercenaries in their group – and Victor could sure come up with a couple of chosen words – but one couldn’t say they lacked initiative. Without as much as a blurted order from the young Lieutenant, they moved to cover two of the three remaining exits. The same couldn’t be said for the two enlisted men of the Watch who seemed as enterprising as fat man on a hot day. Even when Trefell ordered them to cover the garden access, they did so with as much gusto as if they were walking to their own funeral. Victor couldn’t really blame him despite disliking their mindset. They looked like they had been in the City Watch for a number of years, and now they were stuck with this kid straight off the tit, the tit being the Armed Forces Academy. Allain Terfell probably had a making of a good officer, probably did well in all the drills and knew the rules and instruction manuals by heart. But he was thrown into the water too soon and he was already struggling to keep afloat.

“Guess that leaves us with the front door,” Victor said, and the Lieutenant responded with a firm nod, as if the lack of audience put some steel in his spine. He made the three steps up to the closed double doors with firm strides, one hand on his saber, the other already up to knock on the door. And then they heard the horrendous scream.

Up until that point, Victor Callahan was still fairly certain this would be an easy job, a fine day. They would bang on the door and stroll right in like they owned the place, and Terry Dugan would be pissing his pants, and if he wouldn’t be pissing his pants, they’d make him piss blood the next couple of days. Maybe he’d even see Kitty in there. He liked her, she was easily his favorite in the Saddle Ablaze. All the prostitutes in this place were professionals; they moaned when they were supposed to and gave you plenty bang for your buck. But Kitty... Kitty almost made him feel like he was special, almost looked at him as if he was more than a regular john, all the way to the point where he had to leave a coin pouch on her bedside. That always put a dampener on the whole affair. Still, all things considered and compared, blonde little Kitty was the best investment a man could make in that place as far as Victor was concerned.

But all those thoughts of blonde-haired hellion turned to vapor once that scream broke the uncanny silence. “They’re getting killed in there,” Leiutenant Trefell said, and then he was at the door, slamming his foot against it. When it failed to do the job, he tried again with his shoulder, this time sending the doors crashing inwards. There was another sound aside from the splintered wood, though, a strum-and-whistle that both Victor and Allain recognized when it was already too late. The crossbow bolt caught the young man in the chest, piercing his chain mail and spinning him around just in time to be caught by the ex-prizefighter. Victor pulled the kid sideways and away from the entrance; he stared back at him with a look that was more surprise than pain, as if he couldn’t believe this actually happened. But that lasted for about as long as it took Callahan to pull out his gun; from that point on it was only agonizing pain on his face.

“Gods... They... They shot me...” Allain managed to squeeze through teeth clenched so tight his gums were turning white. “It hurts... By the gods, it hurts.”

“I bet,” Victor said, extending his gun hand just far enough to fire off a couple of blind shots into the interior that was suddenly being filled with more and more commotion. The young man next to Padre couldn’t stifle a wail as tears started to roll down his cheeks. “You’ll be fine, kid. I think it missed the lung.”

“But... the pain...” He uttered another enervating cry. “I can’t... I...”

Victor administered the only painkiller he had in his possession, an offhanded smack across the jaw that sent the greenhorn down the highway to dreamland. “You’ll thank me for that later.”

There were other sounds coming from the inside now, the clanging of metal against metal, and wood cracking, and more men screaming and cursing. He had to get in there, hopefully without getting a chest full of bolts. So instead of doing the obvious, Victor scuttled away from the door, took two steps back from the nearest window and launched his ample bulk through the glass. He fired the first two shots haphazardly from the prone position in which he had crash-landed, then rolled right and behind the oak bar, knocking over the stools as he did so. He caught a brief glimpse of the layout as fled for the nearest cover. Most of the tables on the main floor were overturned, flat surfaces facing the door with heads and crossbows popping above them. Up against the railing of the second floor the ambushers had pushed a number of waist-high cabinets, using them as protection.

“Real smooth, Callahan. Real smooth,” Victor muttered to himself, crouched with his back against the oak bar. A pair of bolts struck the wall in front of him, and another landed near his foot, making him pull it closer on pure instinct. His mind was still working on more than just bare instincts, reminding him that three bolts missed meant three men that had to reload. Three less men trying to turn him into a human sieve. He rather liked the odds.

Rolling sideways from his crouched position, Victor unloaded the magazine of his pistol at the men above, missing with each and every bullet. But despite that, the gunfire did its job, providing him enough cover to pull his shotgun free with his left. The first barrel tore a hole the size of an cow’s head in one of the tables, turning the guts of the man behind to minced meat. The second barrel was less precise, exploding against another desk, but leaving the man behind intact. Victor dropped back behind the bar.

“Some help,” he shouted as his hands did the ritual of reloading the weapons that by now they could do without assistance of his eyes. “would be much appreciated!”

Only when his words already left his mouth did his mind acknowledge the possibility that there might not be anybody to respond.

[Amen]

Downing’s breath audibly caught in his throat at the first scream, and he blessedly held it as further sounds of pain and fury reached them from around the whorehouse. When the youth began to whisper harshly, Marcus dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder to steady and quiet him. Otherwise, he did not immediately move.

“Not just one door,” Book finally muttered. “Front and the far side. Dugan knew we were coming maybe.”

“A trap?!”

“Maybe. Maybe he’s just better paid and more paranoid than the Watch guessed.”

“We should go around and help!”

Marcus eyed the door before them and thought. “That’s a sturdy looking door, isn’t it?” he said, half to himself. “Draw your sword, boy.”

Mycah began to argue, but the older mercenary was already dropping down the steps to the basement door. Startled and seeing no other option, the boy struggled with his hip-sheathed sword and yanked it free just as Book’s boot met the wood to the side of the latch.

The jamb splintered resoundingly and the door flew open, scraping an explosion of dust from the floor. Marcus Book stalked purposefully into the dark and, to his credit, Downing only hesitated a second before following.

The boy was hardly inside before the door slapped closed again, plunging the fighters into darkness. There was a man behind the door, his eyes long since adjusted to the low light, and he wore a sword on his left and a dirk on the right. The stalker came forward boldly, trusting his advantage. What he didn’t know was that Marcus Book’s eyes held always a supernatural spark of light, so that he saw in the dark better than he did in the light.

The templar whipped past his momentarily blinded companion. The stalker first tried to draw his sword, but the quarters in the basement were close and the hilt caught on a shelf. Struck dumb, he went on holding the hilt even as Marcus stole his dirk and then returned it to him, this time between his ribs.

Book shoved the stalker off the blade and let him fall, and then turned fully expecting to find Mycah Downing dead. He was pleasantly surprised, then, to find that the boy had brought his blade down on another young man’s collarbone and laid him low. There had been a third man in the dark, but his footfalls were retreating up a staircase on the far end of the cellar.

The door slowly drifted open again, allowing the morning light to gradually sweep the curtain of darkness away from the bloody scene. Mycah stared wide-eyed down at the body he had broken. The boy was only a little older than him, and whimpered as he clenched his shoulder.

“They weren’t supposed to come in here,” he kept muttering, over and over.

Marcus didn’t seem to care. He smiled a bit, proud of himself. “Thought so. Figured we’d want to stay quiet, so we’d go around before breaking down a door. You didn’t count on me. Never was good at being quiet.”

And then there was a thunderous explosion of shattered glass from above, and something struck the floor so heavily that dust shook loose from the basement ceiling like rain. Then came the metallic pops of Callahan’s gun. “Not the only one, I guess,” Book muttered. “Come on, we’re not done yet.”

The boy hesitated a bit longer this time, still staring disbelievingly down at the youth he’d wounded, but soon he followed the larger warrior. The basement was full of wine bottles on shelves and heavy casks of swill. And against the walls were mattresses wrapped in torn burlap, and there were thousands of unused candles on shelves cut into the stone walls, and rolls of burgundy carpet were leaned up against the pillars to either side of the staircase that led up into the building proper.

Marcus was most of the way up the stairs when the click-and-twang of a fired crossbow sounded above, and the templar barely leaned back in time to avoid the bolt. His luck had little to do with his speed – the crossbowman had fired too soon.

“Give me something to throw,” Book growled, and Mycah looked around before tossing him a heavy bottle of wine.

With a shrug and a grunt, the man leaned around the corner and threw hard, and Mycah heard glass shatter. Without needing to be told, he offered another bottle of wine. Marcus threw that too, and this time the glass didn’t shatter.

The pair rounded the corner and found the crossbowman on the ground, beside a cracked bottle. He was bleeding from the forehead, and he wasn’t breathing.

“Some help would be much appreciated!” someone gruffly shouted from the common room.

Downing had hardly processed the words when Marcus flew around the corner, sprinted down a short hallway, and came upon two men crouched behind an upended table. On the opposite side and across the room, Victor Callahan cast a cautious glance over the top of the bar.

Book did not hesitate. His stolen dirk was buried in a throat before either of his enemies knew he existed. The remaining man set upon him swiftly, and Marcus went down beneath him. The templar struggled to get his feet between their bodies, and when it wouldn’t happen he wrapped his legs high around the man’s ribs to hold him at bay. That was fine for the other man, who was larger and accustomed to a good fist fight. He threw a punch and very nearly knocked all sense out of the bronze-skinned warrior, who wisely slid out of the way of the second swing. Knuckles broke against wood, and Book snapped up and bit into the flesh of his attacker’s nose and cheek.

His mouth filled with blood, which in turn he spat into the pugilist’s eyes. In all his thousands of fights, the big man had never seen or heard of anything like this, and he was stunned long enough for Marcus to retrieve his dirk and bury it in a red-stained eye.

Book fell back with a pained groan, and his teeth were red when he grimaced. A third man stood over him now, smiling cruelly, and he aimed his crossbow at Marcus’ face from point-blank.

And then a bolt caught the would-be murderer in the chest and took him straight to the ground, and the templar raised his head and grinned crimson at the sight of Mycah Downing holding a crossbow.

[The Cinderella Man]

For a brief moment Victor Callahan was certain he had been hung out to dry, and yet that thought didn’t come as a surprise to him. Lady Luck didn’t have the tendency to favor the ex-prizefighter, constantly turning the blind eye when life kept screwing him over. He usually wound up with the short end of the stick, or with the short straw, or just on the wrong side of a sticky situation. Someone once said that it was better to be born without a dick than without luck, because if you had luck, there was a chance your dick would grow back. A lewd joke. Always made Victor snicker. And it always seemed to ring true because here he was, once again way up dung creek, and not a paddle in sight. And they said Justice was blind.

But then someone started to cause an entirely different kind of commotion amidst the ranks of the ambushers, and suddenly the attention was shifted from Victor. He was able to take a peek over the counter without an almost certain long-distance lobotomy, catching a glimpse of the dark-skinned warrior and his young companion. He certainly pegged him right when he first saw him; the man was tearing into his opponents like a whirlwind. And that was all the invitation Victor needed to make his move as well.

There were still three crossbowmen up on the first floor, but now they leaned forward and over their cover to get a shot at the two new assailants. Padre leveled his gun with the first one on the right, for the first time with sufficient time to steady his aim, and pulled the trigger twice. He didn’t even hear the pistol fire; after you fired enough shots, the gunfire became little more than white noise, just something you associated with the muzzle flash that made you squint your eyes. The two shots struck the man in the chest, sending him reeling backwards and out of sight. He moved the gun a couple of inches to the left, fired again, dropped another bogie. The third one caught wind of him by then and even got a shot off, but it was rushed and missed by some good three feet. Victor’s aim was impeccable. He emptied the rest of the magazine at the man above.

Eject. Reload. Resume.

He was about to finally take a step out of the cover when a pair of hands appeared from around the counter and grabbed for him. One of the hands caught him by the collar of his overcoat, the other locked around the wrist of his gun hand, yanking him to his feet, then slamming him against the wooden floor. Victor held on for the pistol for a couple of moments more, but then his attacker’s boot landed on his forearm, forcing him to drop it. His other hand moved for the sawed-off, but managed to free it out of the holster just in time to be struck away by another vicious kick. The man above him allowed a yellow-toothed grin before he brought a dagger down at the surprised gunman.

But the blade never made contact. Instead of plunging it deep into the flesh of Victor Callahan, the remaining attacker dropped the sword with a vacant look in his eyes. His last controlled motion was reaching for something behind him, like a man with the world’s most annoying scratch between his shoulder blades, before his body fell limp and he collapsed on the ground next to Victor. There was a dirk stuck in the man’s spine, and the burly gunfighter had only to lift his eyes to see where it had come from. The odd-looking tough guy walked towards him, offering a helping hand.

“Book, right?” Victor asked, accepting the aid and getting up with a grunt. “Nice throw. Looks like I owe you one.”

It was a nice throw. People usually took knife throwing for granted. Victor sure had, until he actually tried throwing one and ended up hitting the target with the wrong end of the dagger more often than not. There was more to it than just letting it rip, a fluid trained motion of the hand or something, he couldn’t really say. Knives and swords were never his bag.

“Don’t sweat it. Let’s just make sure there aren’t any more surprises lurking around and see if we can find this Dugan,” the merc said, retrieving the dirk from the fresh corpse. The blade made a wet, meaty sound as it came out of the flesh, reminding Victor once again why he preferred guns. Blowing someone away was clean business... at least for the shooter.

“Are we the only ones left?” the kid at Marcus’s side asked, still a little jumpy.

“Dunno. Our Lieutenant took one in the chest, but I think he’ll be fine,” Victor said, bending over and retrieving his weapons. He cracked open the shotgun and checked the shells, then stuffed back under his overcoat. “I smacked him across the gob and left him just outside the door. He shouldn’t come around at least another half an hour.”

Marcus seemed to allow a smirk, and the reaction almost made Victor decide he liked the man. He didn’t trust him quite yet (despite the life debt dealio), but he didn’t trust any of them yet and trust wasn’t mandatory anyways for the job. But there was an air of solidity around this man, the stable kind of firmness that elicited respect, and it made Book the kind of a man you could be friends with if the situation was different.

“So, let’s see if...”

But Victor never got a chance to finish. The sound of glass breaking cut him short, followed by another, then two more coming in through the windows. And by the time their eyes tracked down the sources of the noise, the petroleum bombs already went up in flames. The fire effectively blocked all the exits to the street from the main room, the flickering flame tongues greedily licking at the wood and spreading like a virus to everything they touched. And that didn’t even seem to be the worst of it. Only then Victor noticed a number of barrels carefully tucked away in the corners of the room, the pitch dripping from some of them in thin rivulets as black as death they were meant to bring.

“Oh, this can’t be good,” was all the ex-con said, eyes transfixed on the spreading fire. It wasn’t turning out to be a good day, a solid day. Not a solid day at all.

[The International]

Esme leaned against the threshold of the kitchen door as he took a look at his pocket watch. It seemed as though Brogen’s soprano wailing was the first not in a vast orchestra of violence. A chorus of agony came from the other rooms as the growing flames roared in synch. There was even a deafening cadence firearm blasts. He looked up to see that his Song Magic had provided a path within the forest of tangerine flames, and so he skipped along that path allowing wave upon wave of heat to caress his face as he went along.

The spy drew his rapier with a ring as he turned the corner with caution, which was well paid off as a shadow veiled figure raised a crossbow. Not a second later, a deadly bolt took flight, piercing a curtain of light provided by the common room’s doorway and whizzing past Esme only to puncture the wood paneled wall on the other side him. The figure retreated up a flight of stairs ahead as he fumbled about to reload his weapon. Surely this was the culprit. Henchmen would have stayed and fought.

Esme began to hiss a chant again as he calmly followed, leaving the kitchen fire behind him to expand as the embers multiplied and consumed anything they could find like a plague of searing locusts. Next time the spy would be ready to capitalize on the culprit’s reloading time. The doorway to his right served as the frame for a picturesque gathering of three generations of warriors in the common room. That image was quickly disrupted by the blasts of a trio of petroleum bombs.

“Looks like the only place to go is up.” Esme said as he shrugged his shoulders. “Good thing that’s the only place for our target to go too.”

The glossy eyed kid passed first. He must have gone through some type of trauma just now to have been in such a paralyzed state. With that in mind Esme put a hand on his chest to halt him from going up the stairs. Someone with a more level head needed to go up first, and that someone was Marcus Book, the warrior his son had faced during a sting operation about a year ago. It wasn’t a surprise to see him gain. That was why he and his wife forbade their children to go to the Citadel. One’s chances of crossing paths with a warrior who frequented Althanas’ premier arena were so high that covers could easily be blown. Next came the well armed, but otherwise inconspicuous gunman who served as the Empire’s disciplinary arm in this situation. Esme liked him.

The warriors headed up the stairs two by two, with Villeneuve and Callahan in front, and Book and Downing in the back. Their feet pounded the wooden panels almost in unison as Esme spoke. “Take cover in the doorways after the lighting strike.”

“Lightning strike?” The kid said from directly behind him.

“Yea.” Esme raised his rapier as the sparsely lit second story corridor came into view. “This one.”

A deafening clap came with a pale blue strike of lighting that cracked the fabric of reality between the tip of his blade and the wall on the other side of the hallway. While it failed to hit any of the wildly flinching marksmen, it served its purpose, which was to disorient the enemies who were surely waiting for them to come up the stairs. This gave each of them ample time to find cover in the doorways of the ‘meeting rooms’. Esme’s nostrils were filled with the smell of sex and… leather?

“What are you doing?” Marcus said with a mix of confusion and frustration as he watched Esme take a whip off of the wall of fetish paraphernalia. “How exactly are we going to get out of here?”

“Just thought I’d pick up a gift for the old lady while we wait for them to get to a reloading point.” Esme said as he strapped the whip to his belt. He glanced at book across a steady stream of darting arrows. “And I imagine one of these windows leads out to the porch roof, which we can use to soften our jump down.”

[Amen]

Marcus cocked an eyebrow, and was momentarily amused, and upon realizing it he decided he liked this strange man that called himself Vanderbilt, despite his apparent magic and sly bearing. Book's heart was thundering in his ears, louder than the roar of flames, and his breathing was shallow and not for the smoke. The smoke was deadlier for the moment, rising from the common room below and gathering so thickly that the threat of it forming a solid barrier seemed almost credible.

The templar feared fire, and only by admitting it to himself was he able to choke down the looming panic. No, no, he told himself; think of Vanderbilt and his whip. Some lady, he decided, yes. At first he wanted to meet the woman that took a whip for a gift, and he eyed Erick for a moment to guess at his age. Maybe it would be better to hope the man had daughters. Adventurous daughters and no protective sons.

He tried to picture it, but the first image was a smart, pretty young noblewoman stumbling away from him in abject horror. In his imagining he was a walking corpse covered in oozing burn scars and pustulant yellow growths wherever the skin wasn't charred.

Shut up.

But it was too late at that point. His eyes were burning, and even the distant golden starbursts resting in the centers of his pupils could not pierce the gathering smoke, and the temperature was incredible. It was an oven, the heat lending the air an inestimable weight. Just standing was becoming a feat of muscle.

“We have to risk it. Nobody can see to hit us through this,” he finally said. He hoped his excuse sounded reasonable. In truth, he had just decided he would prefer to take a quarrel to the face than die burning.

He slipped past Vanderbilt and Callahan before they could poke holes in his logic, and Downing feebly tried to grab him by the shirt to stop him, but too late. Marcus crouched and hurried down the hallway, smoke-blind. He lifted the collar of his cotton shirt over his mouth and nose, and halfway through he heard a tremendous crash. For a moment he froze, petrified at the thought that the barrels in the corners were exploding, but no – not yet.

The sound had come from his right. A door was there, he found. He turned the knob and shoved his shoulder against the wood, but the damn thing wouldn’t open more than an inch. Fear turned briefly into frustration, and Marcus shoved again, and the door opened a bit more. A piece of wooden furniture had fallen across the doorway and-

Book cursed out loud when the end of a crossbow bolt pierced the wood just above his head. Of course it hadn’t fallen, it had been put there. In his panic, he’d forgotten that threat altogether. Marcus took a deep breath, smoke and all, and let fear feed rage. Whatever the furniture, it was not too heavy. Book threw his shoulder against the door repeatedly, desperately, and furiously, and it opened just enough for him to squeeze through.

There was the vague silhouette of a man on the opposite side, shielded by smoke and framed by the distant glow of sunlight. Freedom. His hands worked the crossbow deftly, and even now he was pulling the mechanism back and setting the bolt. Book charged as the crossbow came up, and his battle cry was “HERE!”

The bolt sang, cutting a beautiful, shifting pattern in the smoke as it flew. Marcus collided with the shooter, and his momentum carried both their bodies through the glass window and into the empty air, and then they fell.

[The Cinderella Man]

A goddamn berserker. That was what Marcus Book seemed like to Padre as he ran down the hallway like some wannabe hero, feeling impossible to kill in his mad rush. Victor was perfectly content with playing chicken with the crossbowmen, wait out and see who buckles first under the stuffy onslaught of the smoke and the heat of the subsequent fire. Sure he seemed to be coughing his lungs out and his ass felt genuinely on fire, but his foes weren’t having a picnic either. Surely they were just about to tuck tail? But then Marcus made a run for it and time for hiding was over and time for seeking started anew.

Victor followed Marcus as well as he could, stumbling through the gray veil with the crook of his left arm against his face, his right pointing a gun at everything and nothing. He heard two bolts whistle by him, but they seemed to pass high and through the middle of the hallway while Padre kept to the right and as low as he could. He replaced the pistol with the sawed-off; the scattergun was bound to hit something in a place as narrow as this. By the time he caught up with the vanguard of their little group, Marcus had already slipped inside and Victor moved to follow... only to get temporarily dissuaded by a near miss from one of the bolts. Did it rip a hole in the sleeve of his coat? It sounded that close at least. At any rate, he paused for a moment, emptied both barrels at the opposite end of the hall, then shouldered his way past the door that was after Marcus’s entrance barely hanging on its hinges.

There was nobody in the room, but the smoke was less dense, possibly due to a broken window opposite to the semi-barricaded door. From outside and down below came the sounds of crunching glass and tumbling bodies. “Come on! Out the window!” he shouted, using the barrel of his discharged shotgun to smash the jagged edges of the glass remaining in the window frame. He motioned to Erick and Mycah to make their exit. “I’ll cover you. GO!”

He reloaded the sawed-off, but there was no need for additional gunfire as their enemies didn’t seem too keen on pursuing with the building coming down on their heads. He slipped out with both eyes on the door, which in turn meant there were no eyes on the porch roof. His boot landed on a dewy piece of moss that slipped right under him, sending his considerable bulk in an uncontrolled tumble down the tiled slope. There was a line of shrubbery just below the porch, round green bubbles of it with gentle white flowers amidst soft cushy leaves that surrounded the entire brothel. Victor’s momentum sent him down and over the edge on a trajectory that landed about a foot beyond the soft green landing. He touched the ground with an audible grunt and the sound of a sack of potatoes landing in the cellar. Not that it could actually heard by anyone save himself. Because even as he made his less than gracious contact with the ground, the Saddle Ablaze, staying true to its name, started to crackle and implode in a great heap of fire and embers.

“Well, that could’ve gone smoother,” Victor grumbled to nobody in particular as he pushed himself up first to his knees, then slowly up with a crackle in gods knew how many bones in his body. But he’s had worse. Bareknuckle-Illegal-Fistfight-In-Some-Shithole-In-Radasanth Worse. This would hurt a day, two at worst.

“Hey, mister, you alright?” Mycah was first to approach the ex-pugilist.

“Not really,” Victor said, but his trademark aloof smirk was on, sending a different message. He was alive and his enemies were not and that was good.

“Unsurprising. I’ve certainly seen better landings.” It was the Erick fellow speaking now, coming from behind the kid with a whip in his hand and what looked like a complacent grin. It made the man look more like a politician and less like a common merc. “You should be happy to know that we caught one of them. Come, the big fella has him restrained.”

Erick Vanderbilt led the way past the hole in the rickety wooden fence and towards the house just beyond it, where Marcus Book held a man at sword point. The olive-skinned swordsman looked like he had better days, but then again, didn’t they all? His prisoner was an unremarkable man by all accounts, looked to Victor like the type of common thug you could find a dozen of in every sleazy bar this side of Merchant District. His hair was long and greasy and his face was covered by about three days worth of salt-and-pepper beard, and he looked just a bit too scrawny for his height. He was holding for his right arm, which was bleeding moderately, probably from that tumble through the window.

“Tables have turned, it would seem,” Victor said, as he approached the man, tapping Marcus on the shoulder to lower his weapon. “Alright, boyo, time to spill them beans. Where is Terry Dugan?”

“Fuck you!” the man spat back.

“Not really an answer I was looking for,” Padre said with a false disappointment on his face. He swung one of his huge fists, connecting with the right side of the merc’s ribcage, feeling some bones snap from the blunt trauma. It sent the man to stumbling backwards until his back hit the wall. “Now, again. Terry Dugan? We need to find him.”

“Fuck you,” the same response, only with a little less conviction. Then: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I see.” This time the fist caught the man in the plexus, sending him to his knees and knocking the air out of his lungs.

“M...Maybe he doesn’t know anything. We should take him back to headquarters,” Mycah, obviously not a proponent of the line of questioning, said timidly.

“Bull. They knew we were coming, set us up with a nice party. He has to know something.” He was turning from the kid and pulling his fist back for some more blunt persuasion, when the man caught his breath and put his hand up.

“Wait! Just wait!” The mercenary’s breath was shallow, but somehow he found enough of it to form short sentences. “We’re just hired swords. Some guy hired us for a hefty sum. Said all we needed to do is kill some watchmen. Burn the place down to cover our tracks. I don’t know anybody named...”

But Victor wasn’t listening anymore. Something clicked in his head when the man mentioned burning the place down, something important that he should’ve thought of before, something he would’ve thought of if he hadn’t been dodging crossbow bolts like raindrops and trying to outrun Radasanth’s biggest pyre. The Lieutenant. The young Lieutenant he had left on the porch. On the porch of the building that was collapsing even as they stood here, shooting the breeze with this son of a bitch.

“Damn it!” And then he was running, sprinting down the length of the brothel which by now had fire bursting from every door and window, every crack in the boards. By the time he came around to the front, the porch had already collapsed as did most of the top floor, making the entrance one huge pile of debris burning at about a million degrees. He couldn’t even see the front door where he had left the wounded officer, let alone approach it. When he actually made a move towards the blaze, a hand caught him by the shoulder. At the far end of it was Erick too-smooth-for-a-merc Vanderbilt.

“He’s gone. There’s nothing you can do.”

Victor shrugged the hand away, his face contorted in a frown for the first time today. Vanderbilt was only half right, he knew. There was still something he could do. He moved past Erick without a word spoken, his footsteps as firm as if he was angry at the dirt beneath. His hand retrieved the pistol from the holster, fingers working like clockwork as they ejected first the magazine, then the chambered round.

“We’ll get nothing out of him if you shoot him.”

Victor didn’t seem to hear. He pulled another magazine from the inside of his overcoat, slammed it in, chambered the bullet, cocking the hammer as he approached the wounded merc. And when he spoke, his voice was menacing and low. “Now listen to me, boyo. There are about a dozen bullets in this gun here that I accidentally got wet. Sometimes they fire, sometimes they don’t. I’d say you have about fifty-fifty chance with every one of them. So let us begin. Terry Dugan?”

“I don’t know...”

Victor leveled the gun with the man’s forehead, pulled the trigger and got a dry click. He manually ejected the bullet, catching it deftly with his hand as it bounced out of the chamber.

“Where is Terry Dugan?”

“Please, I told you...”

Another dry click. The man was positively shivering by now, pushing against the wall as if it was made of wet cement and he could somehow sink into it and away from the maddened man with the gun. Another round was ejected and snatched in mid air.

“Where is...”

“Gods, I don’t know! I really don’t know. I never heard of Terry Dugan!” the man was screaming desperately. “We were just hired for a job. I swear.”

“I think he’s telling the truth,” Marcus said, his sword pointing at the man’s crotch. There was a wet spot spreading around his groin and down his trousers.

“Hired by whom?”

“Some guy named Hunnigton. Sam Hunnigton, I think. He has a shop up in the Bazaar. We were supposed to rendezvous there after the job. Collect our pay. That’s all I know. Gods, that’s all I know.”

Victor looked at the man for what seemed like minutes, gauging every move, every twitch, every blink. His bullshit meter was telling Padre that the merc was indeed telling the truth. But that didn’t change the fact that he was responsible for burning the Lieutenant alive.

“We should probably check this shop out. It isn’t far,” Victor said, turning away from the prisoner and returning the pistol to the holster beneath his left armpit. He once again switched it for the shotgun.

“What about him?” Mycah asked, nodding towards the merc.

Victor shot the man in the chest with both barrels without even turning to face him, cold blooded and cool as cucumber, none of them really expecting it. “He’s not going anywhere,” he said, holstering. The young Lieutenant was a force of good in the world and this man was not. Victor was merely restoring the balance. Or some other quasi-sensible bullshit like that. It was as good explanation for his anger as any.

[The International]

Esme wanted so desperately to hop up and down in excitement at Callahan’s death sentence of the mercenary, but that would have been… rude. Yes. Rude was the word. He had to settle for a reserved clap with a tight grin as he muttered. “Bravo, gunman.”

The three warriors looked at him with crinkled eyebrows and tilted heads. They remained silent, and allowed their boots to do the talking as they started in the proper direction. “Would it be rude to say that I’m looking forward to the encore performance?”

“He killed a good Lieutenant, Vanderbilt.” Victor said without turning around. “Clap when you’ve bought a ticket.”

Esme shrugged his shoulders as he followed behind them, but hung back a bit as he reached under the top of his shirt to bring up a violet diamond. Its flawless reflection and amplification of the sunlight compelled him to squint his eyes even though he wasn’t looking at it. With a bit of concentration his mind hollowed out as if nothing was in there, and his audible thoughts began to ring through his ears. Soon it all quieted, and he called out in his head.

Checking in. Esme’s own voice banged against the inside of his skull. His own baritone vibrato gave made him cringe. This must have been how other people heard his voice. How are things going everyone?

Twists and turns. A smooth feminine ring sounded like music to the spy’s ears. His eldest daughter, Maelle sighed. But I think I’m navigating them well… all things considered.

Same, but that’s to be expected, right, Dad? Vespasian’s optimism was always refreshing. The manic Villeneuve women were a force to be reckoned with, but they had a taste towards the negative. Soon the town of High Point will be patient zero for an unstoppable epidemic that will spread across Northern Corone like wildfire, and that epidemic is democracy.

Haha. Good to hear. Ludivine?

Doing what I can, Dad. Ludivine’s quiet inner voice managed to hide her harsh nature. The middle child continued. There’s another in Akashima that wants the same thing we do. Anyone ever heard of Lillith Kazumi?

Yes. Watch your back. The familiar voice of his wife Alix Villeneuve sent an easing warmth through Esme’s body. He glanced at the whip at his side with a smile. It’s a bit early for the check in, isn’t it.

It is. I tapped in for another reason. Has anyone ever heard of a merchant named Sam Hunnington?

A resounding chorus of No followed.

This guy owns a shop in the Bazaar, and the famous merchant family of Villeneuve hasn’t heard of him?

Sounds like a cover up. Vespasian thought.

Or a false flag. Maelle thought.

Those were all possible, but what did the most battle tested of them think?

If nothing else… Ludivine’s thought came with a snake’s hiss.

“We could be walking into a trap.” Esme said aloud for his partners to hear. They all stopped and turned just as they reached the door of the shop. “I’m primarily a merchant, and a damn good one at that. I know everyone who owns a shop at the Bazaar, and there aren’t many of them since most have vendors or carts. I don’t know Sam Hunnington.”

“What do you suggest we do then?” Marcus said with his arms folded in front of his chest. “Go back to HQ for reinforcements they can’t spare?”

“No, Negative Nancy.” Esme mirrored Marcus but added a feminine twist to it. “We just need to enter with caution. The kid can watch the windows, and you and I can cover Callahan while he kicks in the door.”

The others complied as casual steps became the stalking steps of a Tular Tiger. Everyone crouched as they closed in on the chocolate front of the log stacked edifice. Esme and Marcus pressed their backs against both sides of the door with blades in hand, while Mychah surveyed the windows from afar. Victor readied his firearms as he strutted towards the front door. Then with a boot to the most sensitive area of the door, he produced a bang as big as his gun. The door swung open to reveal… nothing.

They stepped into a room taken over by a dark void saved only by two leaning pillars of dust filled afternoon light. The moldy air tickled Esme’s nose to the point of sneezing a few times.

“No one’s home.” Victor narrowed his eyes. “We’ve been had.”

“Maybe not.” Marcus pointed to the ground, where the dust had created a thick layer of translucent snow and revealed several sets of footprints. He followed them until the sound of his boots along the paneled floor suddenly changed. “A trap door.”

Marcus stepped aside as the four of them worked together to find the opening of the door. The voice of Esme’s wife filled his head as he labored along. It’s me, Esme. I looked into the records and we have done business with a Sam Hunnington. It was just years ago. He owned a shop in the Bazaar, but he disappeared just after the Empire was founded.

The message ended just as the four of them dropped into a wide subterranean corridor lit by torches along the walls. Esme scratched his head. He had to assume the worst about Sam Hunnington. The worst wasn’t that he was taken in by one of the Empire’s Inquisitors and sentenced to death. The worst was that he defected.

“This doesn’t make sense.” Mychah said. “Wouldn’t an escape route for a criminal like Dugan leave the city? This is going South, right into the heart of the city.”

“That’s because he’s not trying to run from something, but trying to get to something.” Esme’s eyes widened as he made the connection.

There were too many critical locations south of here. Noble townhouses, the Watch Headquarters, a Viceroy’s Palace! He began a sprint down the tunnel. If anyone was going to take down a critical location, it was going to be him.

[Amen]

A blade will kill just as sure as a bullet, they’d told him.

Marcus didn’t believe that anymore. After seeing that mercenary’s guts turned to a fine red mist through leather armor, he wanted a gun. Sure, it was less personal, and there was something satisfying about seeing an enemy’s lights gradually go out while his heat seeped wetly out over blade and hilt and hand. But there too was something satisfying about ending the conflict all at once, with naught but a squeeze.

He’d been shocked by the execution. Not by the act, of course. Of all the people that had ever threatened the life of Marcus Book, perhaps three yet walked the earth, so he would have done the same. The shock was from the sudden thunder, the ease and the immediacy of a life snuffed out.

I need a gun, Book affirmed to himself.

And then he stifled a cough. Smoke is the annoying brother to fire, and the templar figured he’d be coughing until tomorrow morning – assuming he was still drawing breath tomorrow morning. On the way to Sam Hunnington’s bazaar shop, Book had coughed loud and freely, and spat in the gutters to rid his mouth of the pugilist's blood and the whorehouse’s flavor. Now, in the eerie tunnel beneath the streets of Radasanth, stealth was prudent so he coughed as silent as a man is able.

The walls were moist brick, the floor earth, and the ceiling treated wood. The way was not deep: from time to time the party could hear wagons passing overhead or thumping on the walls. Marcus imagined there were cellars to either side, and he wondered how many exits the tunnel might have. The man called Vanderbilt did not seem eager to explore and he was setting the brisk pace.

“Stop,” Callahan whispered. “Stop. D’you hear that?”

The party paused. Ahead, above, and to the right, Marcus did hear it: shouts, sword-song, splintering wood, and gunfire. There was a fight underway, and it was a big one. Mycah Downing muttered to himself, and the rest bolted the rest of the way through the tunnel. The torches led right where the way abruptly branched, and there they revealed a wooden ladder leading up to another trap door.

Somebody brought that, Marcus thought to himself. The wood is new; it would have rotted down here.

The coterie paused, readying their weapons.

“Where do you think we are?” Downing said, unsheathing his notched and bloodstained sword.

“Not sure,” Vanderbilt said, almost half to himself. “The government district, certainly. We didn’t come far enough to reach the residences…”

“One way to find out,” Victor Callahan said with a gun drawn, and he was already most of the way up the ladder.

Marcus smiled, and then bit down on the blade of his dirk so his hands were free to climb. It tasted like steel and old blood.

[The Cinderella Man]

Despite the sounds of battle from overhead announcing they were climbing out of the frying pan and into another fire, Victor’s thoughts weren’t focused on the inevitable conflict even if it was a mere trapdoor away. Instead they kept creeping back to Lieutenant Allain Trefell, a young fella who probably had an essence of a good officer somewhere inside him, waiting for him to develop and mature so they could come to fruition. He would’ve been alive if I hadn’t pasted him one, Victor kept telling himself, would’ve gotten away once they threw their liquid fire on the exits. And the worst part of it was that Padre’s intentions weren’t all that noble when he knocked Allain out. Now that he looked back, he felt that he did it more to shut the kid up and stop his whining than he did to anesthetize the Lieutenant. And that was a punch in the gut that bothered him even now. Could it be that his annoyance cost this young one his life? Was the death on him or the ones that set the brothel ablaze? And why did it bother him so, when he only met the kid today?

Victor was forced the set the questions aside for later, pile them up in some drawer in his mind where they would wait for the calmness of the night, ready to pop up whenever sleep was getting ready to take him. He had reached the top of the ladder, one hand holding onto the ladder, the other holding the pistol which he used to give the trapdoor a gentlest of shoves. It cracked open just enough to slice the darkness with a shaft of yellow light, offering the ex-con a glimpse into the room. What he saw were six sets of legs, all positioned around the hole in the floor, and before he got a chance to push the door open all the way and pop out like a haggard jack-in-the-box, spewing bullets instead of annoying laughter, an invisible hand yanked the door away, effectively destroying any element of surprise they might’ve had. He was cocking the hammer away, still ready to make most of it, when a voice stopped him.

“Whoa, easy there,” the man closest to the hole in the floor said, raising his arms to show he held no weapons. “No need for that. We’re all on the same side here, aren’t we?” He offered Padre a helping hand which the muscular prizefighter accepted dubiously, his eye never too far away from the face above, his finger never too far from the trigger. The room was empty aside from several crates that seemed halfway to decomposing, and judging by the cobwebs and the stale, dusty smell, it had been like that for years.

“You’re the brothel group, right?”

The initial confusion kept Victor silent, his slow-moving mind not able to both acknowledge the opportunity and enunciate a plausible response straight off the bat. That had always been Vic’s problem; it wasn’t that he didn’t know what to say. It’s just that the best lines always came to him five minutes after the situation which would’ve been perfect for their usage. Luckily, Erick Vanderbilt had no such problems, his intellect as sharp as his tongue as he climbed out of the tunnel.

“Indeed we are. And we’re running late, I know,” he said, smooth as death, as if he was best chums with this man none of them saw until seconds before. “We’ve run into some problems.”

“Took a fair share of casualties as well, by the looks of it,” the man added.

“Tell me about it. The bastards really gave us the run for our money,” Erick said, dusting his pants off. Victor, his mind finally connecting the dots and realizing they were indeed mistaken for the squad they cut down, couldn’t deny that he found the charade amusing, like he was having front row tickets to a play with some believable actors instead of hacks who couldn’t read two lines of dialogue without stuttering three times.

“Well, now’s your chance to pay them back. Come, the attack has already begun and we have most of the compound under control,” the leader of the squad of six said. He looked like a confident man to Victor, a weathered man fresh in his middle ages, with a number of battles under his belt. You could always tell a seasoned fighter from a green one. They were always calm, but cautious, loose but precise, certain but not overconfident. “We’re to help storm the Headquarters.”

“The Headquarters?” Mycah let out, then immediately regretted it when all eyes seemed to shift towards him.

“Yes, boy, the Headquarters,” the leader said, the smile from moments ago fading away. “Major Festian barricaded himself there with most of his troops. But he can’t hold on forever,” he concluded, brandishing his longsword, the smile gone and replaced by a grimace. “I have a gift for that heartless bastard.”

It struck all four of them like a bat on the top of the head, rattling their minds and shifting the pieces of the jigsaw. It was supposed to make sense now, all the clues were there, but Victor was too dumb and too angry and too eager to blow these six to smithereens to put it together. All he realized was that they were back in the fortress of the City Watch, and that these men weren’t on his side, and that the time for smiles and lies had passed. All that was left was gunfire. His left was already moving, first to the pocket of his overcoat where it seemingly fiddled with something in its depths, then bypassing it and continuing farther towards the wooden grip of the shotgun. But Erick’s eyes shot spears at him even as he did so, the suave man shaking his head with such minute movements that it didn’t even seem his jaw was moving.

“So, you want us to play along, you slick bastard?” Victor thought, retracting his hand. He had no doubt that Erick had something up his sleeve. More and more it seemed to Padre that Erick Vanderbilt was the kind of a man who could talk his way out of a burning building. But then again, he was a merchant; a golden tongue was what one expected from the likes of him, his role in this little belligerent thriller. And Victor’s role to play the old, tall and ugly. He could do old, tall and ugly.

“We’re wasting time here,” Victor finally said, dropping into a less tense stance. He drew Aicha from the holster and flicked the safety off.

“Yeah, let’s get this show on the road,” Marcus, who also seemed to pick up on Erick’s little charade, added. Mycah was at his side, still antsy as all hell, looked a little like a kettle left to boil a bit too long for Victor, but the man calmed him down with a reassuring look, saying: “Just relax, kid, and follow my lead.”

“Shall we?” Erick had the last word, gesturing towards the door almost like a theatre usher, taking his little game to the limits. The leader of the six unknown mercs snorted and made for the door.

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Vanderbilt,” Victor thought and followed suit as they filed out of the cellar.

[The International]

Esme thanked the six faces of Thayne for this wondrous opportunity he had before him. To a conventional warrior this was a six-on-four battle in which they were outmanned and underequipped. But he wasn’t a warrior. He was a spy, and this was a spy’s fucking dream. He and his team were now deep undercover and they could do more than just thwart a rebel plot. The mercenary and his sextet invited them to join the assault and led them out of the basement and up a narrow flight of stairs. It was in that dim lit staircase that he allowed that ear-to-ear smile to emerge. It’s a good thing they had to walk up single file, or else the mercenaries, or worse, his compatriots, may have seen him. After relishing in what might become a great story to take back to his ship, he put his serious face back on and began to get into character.

First he needed information. Who, what, when, where, how, and why. He already had some of those answered, and some of them weren’t exactly priority, but he needed more. “So how’d our great patron recruit you guys?”

“Anonymously.” The voice of the mercenary group said with a hint of scorn in his voice. Esme didn’t expect a ghost financier. He was almost certain this was a Ranger plot, and since the war began the Rangers loved putting out their names for the sake of selfish glory. There was a way to smoke him out though. “But we find that all of us have one thing in common, a less than satisfactory encounter with the Major Festian. He must leave that weapon of his up his ass every night. How about you guys?”

“I thought you’d be more observant than that.” Esme stopped almost forcing a collision between himself and the three behind him. He put his hands out in a quizzical gesture and puffed up his chest as the six begrudged men turned to look at him. This needed to work. “My boys here – of course they’re just like you. Festian made the young one his bitch.”

Mycah shot Esme a disapproving look.

Esme shrugged his shoulders. “Figuratively of course. But do I look like a mercenary to you,” He didn’t. “Or do I look like a nobleman scorned by the Empire?”

“You’re the financier?” Eyes widened and a slight subconscious drop of the shoulder lines due to deflated ego could be detected. This was good.

“Flattering, but no.” That position was too high. Besides, he wanted to see the financier with his own eyes, and replacing the man he needed wouldn’t get him the man he needed. I would only get him killed. He shot a bit lower. “Every operation financed by the rebellion requires one of the real patriots to at least be a part of things so he can serve as a liaison…” Crinkled eyebrows and mouths in a ‘duh’ shape indicated confusion on some of the mercenaries’ part. “A messenger, and I have a message for you now. Don’t kill Festian or any of his senior officers.”

“Why the hell not?” The one mercenary who had been speaking did so for everyone. This much was indicated by their unified front of angry grunts and frustrated fist pumps. “We’ve been waiting a long time for this! Four months we waited to be summoned!”

“H-he has information that could help us end the Civil War.” Mycah stuttered.

“You’ll be heroes to the Rangers.” Marcus backed his new protégé up with a greater air of confidence.

“… The hell would we want that for? We get to make good money here at home. No fighting someone else’s war like those damn Raiaerans and that Necromancer, or the Falliens with their girl power and their fucking Harpies and Sun Cult, or even Salvar, who packed so much heat in that cold country. This is heaven to us.” The voice of the group said as he clutched the pommel of his sheathed blade. Another tightened the grip on his Akashiman crossbow, two reached inside their black cloaks for some unknown weapon, and the last two, warlocks it seemed, began to twiddle their wands as they leaned on the wall watching Esme and his cohorts. They weren’t going to let them pass until this disagreement was settled one way or another.

This is perfect, and that was not meant to be taken in a sarcastic way. They were hyped up, and in this emotional state they didn’t worry about whether Esme was who he said he was. However, it was time to get them back to his task.

“You didn’t let me finish, fellas.” Esme said, voice unchanged, body even more relaxed than before. “We don’t kill the Major or his senior officers until we get the information we need out of him, and then it’s a slow, painful, excruciating death from there. Isn’t that much more satisfying than a quick shot to the head with that crossbow of yours?”

The mercenaries eased up, but barely. Nonetheless they were inclined to comply. “Indeed.” They didn’t bother to sheath their arms. They were almost at the top of the stairs where all the action was.

The City Watch Headquarters was a barracks in the center of a sea of townhouses, none of which could be seen above the high walls of the main field in which they emerged. Nothing was above them but the sky here, for this sandy field was where the City Watch troops once held their combat training. Now it was sparsely dotted with a few dozen mercenaries looking to make it their own. Everyone’s attention was focused on the giant oaken box that filled the center and connected to the long wall at the compound’s rear. Esme emerged among the warriors as a prince – a sense of entitlement coursing through his veins.

Marcus played along quite well, almost mirroring Esme’s confident body language. The same could not be said for the gain green Mycah, whose wide eyes of fear were accentuated by a wreath of sweat made diamonds. Victor was also less of an actor. He had to stand by and watch these crooks impale the central building with arrows from their crossbows until it looked like a wooden porcupine, take down any defender of the city brave enough to leave its protection with ease, and entertain themselves by tossing a few captives over the walls and out of the corner towers.

“Two dozen.” Esme mumbled under his breath.

“What?” The mercenary asked.

“Twenty four. There are twenty four of you. Where are the others?”

“I told you. We took loses.”

Just making sure. Esme stopped the man and looked at him.

“Look I need you let the boss know that I’ve successfully communicated the change of plans to you.” Esme put his hands on his hips. “And I need someone to tell the rest of these boys the message too.” He turned to the short man with the wand. “Warlock. Let everyone know that we don’t intend on killing the Major or his senior officers. Oh and also tell them I have a man with firearms with me and not to be alarmed when gunshots are fired.”

The warlock nodded and ran off, but the speaker stayed. “How do I get in touch with the boss?”

Nice shit test.

“Don’t do that. I hate it when people do that.” Esme’s face twisted with aggravation as he shook his head. “You know damn well how to contact the boss. Now go do it.”

The speaker nodded as he surely hid a sour retort just at the tip of his tongue. No Rebel coordinator would pay for an operation and leave it out of reach and completely in the hands of profit seeking mercs. He had to be close a place from which he could watch the action closely, but far enough so that he could retreat if he needed to. Now with the speaker gone, Esme was the leader of the mercenaries he left behind.

“There’s a weakness in this building’s defenses. You, over there. You, right there. Warlock number two, you’re with me. Bower, take my gunman to the top with you. The Major won’t even see us coming from there.” Esme’s commands led the four remaining mercenaries into an isolated corner of the field where the central building connected with the back wall. Esme subtly nodded and winked to his real allies to get them in the right places, and within a few minutes, Victor was on the top of the wall beside the bower, Mycah was beside one cloaked merc, Marcus was beside another, and Esme was beside the second warlock. He began to whisper a Raiaeran song of triumph.

“Hey…” Soon the warlock grew aware of this chanting. Perhaps he felt the arcane energy brewing in the air. Surely Esme’s cohorts felt an invigorating rush and the fight taking clear dominance in their fight-or-flight reflex. Even the kid might have been a man at that moment, but he would have to contain it until Esme initiated the attack. The warlock’s thick beard, iconic for Salvarian wizards, ruffled as he spoke with a suspicious and deep tone. “What are you singing.”

“A prayer.” And with that Esme simultaneously drew his rapier and launched an overhead attack.

[Amen]

The urge to pat himself on the back was overwhelming, and Marcus had to repeatedly remind himself that he wasn’t out of danger yet. Here he stood, straight-backed and bold, trusting in the guile of a man he knew not at all. There was a strange calm in him, despite being surrounded and outnumbered. Did he trust Vanderbilt’s skillful manipulations that much, or had the threat of death-by-fire already frayed his nerves completely? He didn’t know, but he was glad his hands didn’t shake and his tongue didn’t stumble.

He was painfully aware of two things. First, his lungs tingled perpetually, and it took a constant and pointed effort not to cough. Second, two of this new crew reeked of iniquity and black magic, and the Sourcelight roiled in him and sent incessant waves of adrenaline through him. Book had desperately escaped a fiery death, and now he was compelled to burn other human beings alive.

Is it any wonder I’m so fucked up?

He fought down the cough-urge and the righteous-murder-urge, and he forced himself to breathe slow and even, and he put the hyper-clarity of adrenaline to use in studying the cloaked man he’d been paired with. They were pressed close, conspiratorially close, Marcus with his bloody dirk and the cloaked man with his own wicked dagger. If the mercenary knew the danger he was in, he didn’t show it.

The black magic stink was getting to him, making him edgy. Edgier. It was like an itch that needed scratching, and every minute it went by unsatisfied the itch grew more annoying. The magic loomed heavy, like a firm wind steadily feeding the Source’s fire.

“What the fuck are they doing over there?” Marcus growled.

The cloaked man turned to look, and Book struck.

As it turned out, the mercenary had some inkling of the danger he was in.

The dirk met nothing but cloak. The mercenary had twisted away, spun, and now he stabbed at Book’s gut. Marcus avoided the attack barely, slashing at a face half obscured by its hood and bending forward as he leapt away. He felt the air displaced above his stomach, even through his shirt. The fighters circled a sparse moment, blades at the ready, and then the dance resumed.

Whoever this man was, he had not come cheap. He was a soft-step, an assassin of surpassing speed and skill. It did not matter how Marcus feinted, his body betrayed his intent long before his blade struck, and it was only fear and an abundance of adrenaline that gave him the speed to avoid the mercenary’s own deft bites. Perhaps with a good bastard sword Book might stand toe-to-toe with this one, safe behind experience and a greater reach, but he had an old dirk and whatever speed he could coax out of his bulk.

That’s usually enough, he mused just as he saw the opening.

He grinned hardly as he struck, blocking the cloaked mercenary’s knife-hand by throwing his forearm against the man’s wrist, and then he came forward and stabbed triumphantly for the gut. There was a chaotic flutter of cloth and a harsh, pained grunt, and with that the fight was over. Marcus Book looked down.

There was a knife in his chest.

The assassin had spun away fast – so fast – and the templar’s knife pierced only the cloak while the assassin reached over his arm and plunged his own knife forth. Marcus sighed, and chuckled as he did it. He’d always done that, from his earliest memory: when he’d worked his body to its breaking point, when he fell as he tried to stand, he would laugh. It always felt good to find one’s limits, and here was the farthest limit life offered.

The assassin stared at him coldly, and the moment stretched.

And stretched.

And then confusion began to show on that cold face, and then concern, and then fear.

Marcus didn’t fall. Even he knew this was strange. Something felt…wrong. Wisps of thin grey smoke wafted over his face, and he realized it was coming from the blood that pooled around the dagger blade. He closed his hand around the hilt and pulled, grimacing at the pain – pain that was still less than it should have been. He realized he had dropped the dirk, but he tossed the dagger back to the assassin anyway.

The mercenary hesitated only briefly after he reclaimed the blade from midair, and then he came again. Marcus raised his hand palm-out and the blade slashed it, drawing blood, but he used the other hand to catch the cloak and he pulled. The fabric ripped and the assassin stumbled, and Book caught his blade-wrist and squeezed. There were a series of muffled pops and the mercenary screamed.

The templar closed his hand over his foe’s mouth to silence him, and then all it took was a simple twist and the breath went out of him.

When had it ever been so easy to break bones? When was a body ever so weightless?

Marcus pressed his fingertips gingerly to his chest and felt through the blood, but the skin was smooth and unbroken. He looked at his palm and through the blood and the smoke he saw no wound. His flesh burned, yes, but the Sourcelight had never healed him so effortlessly, so without agony.

Later, he would describe it thus: being a paladin is like being a glass too small for the liquid being forced into it. But in that moment, the glass had grown.

There was little time to figure it all out. Marcus bolted across the wall to his left. He felt light on his feet as he never had before, indefatigable and limitless. He came upon Mycah Downing, who was crouched beside a headless corpse. The boy clenched his throat and his lips gulped frantically and silently for air. His face was white, and blood pumped between his fingers.

Marcus crouched beside him and pried the boy’s bloodied hand away from his throat, which had been opened wide. Downing’s eyes were all panic and hurt questioning – why? – but Book only grinned as he closed his own hand over his ally’s throat.

“This is going to hurt,” he said, and it did.

In the end, the burn was enough to render Mycah Downing unconscious, but when Marcus removed his hand the skin was whole and the boy began to breathe again. He wrapped his blood-soaked fingers around the hilt of Downing’s sword and tested its heft.

“Sleep,” he told the boy. “You’ve earned it.”

Then he set off to find Vanderbilt.

[The Cinderella Man]

Victor Callahan never put too much stock in charisma and sweet talking. Everything he had ever achieved in life came with price tag, and the currency was usually blood and sweat and tears and pain. He had fought in the gutters of life, lumbering through the days like an old mutt, too stubborn to die, too tired to live. His was a life of violence and violence was the only way he knew to solve problems. But luckily for him and his companions, Erick Vanderbilt was cut from a different cloth, a smooth, velvety material that allowed him to reposition them throughout the compound with naught but a few carefully constructed lies and half-truths. The key was timing, Victor realized as he stood atop of the fortifications, his shotgun drawn and leveled with a pair of eyes as big as gold coins. Timing and delivery. You had to have talent for that, talent and a big bag of guts.

The merc had and arrow notched in his bow, but by the time he had noticed the commotion bellow and realized what was going on, Victor already had him at gunpoint. And it didn’t take a whole lot of evaluation for him to realize that death gazing back at him from those twin barrels would be upon him way sooner than he could draw and shoot. But he had to try something.

“Wait!” he exclaimed, letting the arrow drop and raising his bow. “I surre...”

A gun blast cut him short. His lower jaw was still open from pronouncing the last syllable; everything above it was turned into a spray of blood and brain matter, dispersed over the battlements like red hail. Time for talking was behind them now, lost somewhere in the smoke of the brothel fire that took the life of the young Lieutenant. There would be no prisoners today, one way or the other. Later Victor would wonder when exactly this mad rush of his had began, when was the moment when something inside him clicked and shut his emotions off, turning him from an old boxer down on his luck into a cold-blooded killer. But that would come later. Right now all he saw were enemies and all he wanted to do is introduce them to his lead friends.

He drew his pistol, but his reflexes – so powerful now for some reason, like an invisible iron hand – pulled him down to one knee. Just in time to miss a pair of arrows that came whistling through the air from farther down on the walls. And he could actually see the projectiles sail past him, watched them as they moved as if through water. He had had a moment like that once before. He had been fighting Tarrick The Dirk, an annoying little bugger that could box like the wind and rain jabs like candy, back in Scara Brae’s gym. And at one point everything just clicked and Victor Callahan was in some sort of a zone, a dimension where his awareness was total and his every move was perfect and deliberate, his every punch a thunder from the gods themselves. He hadn’t known what brought this zone back then, and he had no idea what brought it now, but now like then he planned to take advantage of it.

He rose and broke into a run, charging down the length of the battlements and straight at the bowmen lined up on the walls. The first man notched another arrow, but by the time he drew it back a pair of pistol shots caught him in the left side of the chest, spinning him like a loose marionette. The second one rolled to the side and away from the first shot only to be caught by the second one in the thigh. He barely hit the ground before Victor was upon him, sprinting past and offering a buckshot to the chest as a hello. The third man got a bolt off, but again the prizefighter’s reflexes took over, jerking the steamrolling body to the side just enough for the missile to miss, easy as brushing off a stray hook from a fat man. The crossbowman didn’t try to reload. Instead he leapt off the walls and hit a bale of hay beneath. He collected two bullets in the back in mid flight.

The fourth man refused to join his buddies. When the gun-totting Padre came at him, he ran straight towards him, and when the bullets came to claim his life, he broke into a short wall run, dodging them effectively. His twin daggers were out by the time his little acrobatic movement ended and he slid down on his knees, slicing at his attacker as he skidded past him. The knife caught Victor’s side, halting his blind charge. Behind him, the springy merc was already on his feet, now pouncing on Victor’s seemingly undefended back. But whatever magic saved his life from those twin arrows still permeated in the air and Victor moved like in his best days. He pivoted away from the man with the daggers, bringing his pistol around as a response. One of the daggers slapped the gun away just as Victor fired, the shot missing the man’s head by inches. The other dagger sought Padre’s heart, but the shotgun though empty was still useful enough to push it away. And again his gun hand tried to bring Aicha for the kill shot, and again it was denied by a quick swipe. It was a deadly, ugly dance, with no smoothness to it, no panache, just raw efficiency in a quest for death.

It ended as abruptly as it began. The man with daggers fainted left, then dropped low and stabbed with his right at Victor’s gut, but he overextended, leaving enough room for the gunman to bring the shotgun down on his elbow, breaking his arm. With a swift kick to the chest, Victor sent the bowman down from the battlements, the merc’s body landing awkwardly on the stones bellow with a meaty thud.

Victor reloaded and breathed the fire out of his lungs.

“LEEAHN FESTIAN!!!” he shouted once he caught his breath. “LEEAHN, YOU BASTARD, YOU GET OUT OF HERE WHILE THERE’S STILL SOME KILLING TO DO!!!”

Blood craze was upon him, the pain in his side irrelevant, the blood oozing down his leg no more than a splash of water, fatigue a term that didn’t exist in the dictionary. He walked down the stairs that zig-zagged from the walls at a steady pace, his eyes darting across the compound and his pistol following. When he was about halfway down, the main doors of the Headquarters burst open, revealing Leeahn Festian, resplendent and impeccable as ever, leading a motley crew of ten out of the main building. They were winning this, Victor thought. It could turn out to be a solid day after all.

But then a horn blew, its deep blaring silencing every other sound in the proximity, and the tides of battle turned again. Shadowy figures leapt over the walls as effortlessly as if they were jumping hurdles on the training course, two dozen of them lining up on the walls of the fort of the City Watch. Each had a bow as tall as himself and it was already drawn, the arrows trained on the remaining Watchmen. Victor turned to fire, but four were already above him, the tips of their arrows ready to tear air and skin and flesh. He could take one of them down, two perhaps, but the rest... Four more entered through the main gate wielding long swords, clearing the way for the fifth, a blonde-haired half-elf who walked with what looked like equal amount of grace and determination. A long spear made of red wood lay on his shoulder, its smooth tip glittering like no metal Victor ever saw. And at his throat, holding his cloak fastened to his shoulder, stood the sword-and-rifle badge of the Corone Rangers.

“Well, this is certainly a fine mess,” the young elven Marshal muttered as his Deputies took their positions. And to one of his men, he said: “Bar the gate. No one comes in, no one comes out.”

[The International]

The overhead attack was easy enough for Esme’s enemy to dodge. The wizard hopped back leaving only his thick cloak for the polished steel rapier to tear through, and then he retaliated with a ruby red death ray that shot from the wand. Esme took a juke to the side as he made note of the intense heat that stung his right shoulder. He could see a bit of the cloth of his tunic evaporating like water on a hot pan in the corner of his eye. Good thing it was only the tunic. He continued his charge thrusting his rapier forward as it was meant to be – a deadly phallic symbol that desired flesh, not that flimsy textile shit. The wizard managed to exert an invisible force on Esme’s blade. It cast the failed stab aside and Esme into a raising foot. Instead of allowing it to knock the air out of him, the spy gained his footing and moved his body out of the way. He hooked the large boot to his body and yanked back forcing the wizard’s supporting foot to slide out from underneath him and send up an arch of gravel. Flabbergasted and confused, the wizard opened his body up to the tip of Esme’s rapier, which dug deep into his diaphragm to rid him of his breathing… satisfaction.

Then the tides turned as quickly as the wizard lost his breath. Just as the City Watch in their order and discipline emerged to finish off the rest of the criminals, a motley crew of warriors entered at the sound of a horn. Some entered the conventional way. Others scaled the battlements like spiders, and although they had little in common with one another, as was the case with most Coronians they did have one uniting feature – that ominous insignia of the Sword & Rifle Cross. Esme didn’t like the Rangers and their insatiable appetite for ideology. Then again he didn’t like anyone. It was the guard just before them in the yard that provided the most daunting image of the island nation’s most experienced warriors. The most daunting of the vision emerged right before him and Marcus – a synchronized line of armor and long swords that mirrored the afternoon sun above them and burned the eyes. Both sides were armed and ready… with Esme standing in the middle.

“Can’t talk my way out of this shit bag.” Esme shouted up to Victor with a twisted scowl. Confused faces from both factions locked on him. He shrugged as he lowered his rapier. “Just sayin’.”

“Say nothing else, Vanderbilt.” Leeahn belted out in a weathered voice he stepped forward to break rank with his subordinates. He reminded Esme of himself as he started across the field. His maple eyes were intense, his spine was effortlessly straight, and his blade was sure even at its lowered state. The head of the City Watch was fearless just like Esme, but Esme was fearless because he was careless. Leeahn was fearless because he was determined. He addressed the head of the Ranger regiment. “I know you.”

“You do?” The Elf said with a voice as smooth as milk. He stuck his chin in the air as he made the greatest effort to look down at him with jade daggers of eyes. “Tell me, Watchman. Do you remember the men who attacked your precious headquarters on this day?”

“Every last one of them.” Leeahn said dryly. “First name, middle name, last name and 'real' name if they earned one.” A sly smile showed up in the corner of his mouth. “I never forget one of my kids.”

“One of your kids?” The Elf’s laughter was echoed by the rest of the Rangers in his command. He said what everyone else was thinking. “Leeahn, this is no schoolhouse. Those before you are men grown. You dare equate them to children?”

“First off.” The High Watchman raised an insistent finger to the Elf. “Don’t feign concern for these men. Second – a wise man once told me that upholding the common law, no matter where it be, would be like taking care of a bunch of kids who are bigger than you, older than you, stronger and faster than you, and think they’re smarter than you. You’re no Ranger.”

The Elf’s soft churned butter skin wrinkled in anger as golden ore bangs covered his eyes. He dared not raise his voice for it was not befitting his kind. “And why…”

“Because it was a Ranger who told me that!” Leeahn didn’t wait for the Ranger’s leader to finish his question. “He is your superior officer, and he gives that speech to everyone when they join the ranks. Either you have forgotten what it means to serve this country, or you never knew it in the first place. Doesn’t matter.” Leeahn raised his sword. “You’re gonna kill us all anyways. Might as well go down fighting.”

[Amen]

Marcus felt ragged as a crow’s song. Even his facial hair felt heavy. There had been that inexplicable rush, but as Leeahn Festian and the half-elf tested their wits on one another Book felt it fading. In its place was the weight of the day, coming on steady. His chest ached, his lungs were raw, his eyes burned, his shoulders were tight, his fingers were sticky with drying blood. His palm itched. He was thirsty.

He scanned the men there assembled, and thought that this was not the way he hoped to die. He didn’t expect comfort, but something a bit more sudden would have been preferable.

How did I end up here?

He remembered with a start the rat and his proposal on behalf of the viceroy Athenry Sergio, and he traced the progression of events from there. Certainly there had been some foreknowledge of the Rangers’ presence in Radasanth, why else were mercenaries like Marcus Book pointedly sought out for this job in particular? But if the knowledge existed, why hadn’t there been more preventative action? There were armies camped outside the city, just waiting to water their blades with Ranger blood.

Unless the goal wasn’t to stop the Rangers.

But what would that mean?

Book’s mind raced with the possibilities. A viceroy in league with the Rangers? Or simply using them to eliminate another viceroy’s catspaw? Or – and the templar’s blood went cold at the realization – this was more than just an attack on the City Watch. He looked around, guessed at the number of Rangers, and felt his shoulders sag. Could this just be part of a larger force? What if similar attacks were happening all over the city, precision strikes to sweep the capital right out from under the Empire’s feet in one fell swoop? Marcus couldn’t hear the city beyond the walls, but he couldn’t hear much of anything over the argument.

He locked eyes on the Ranger leader, considering his position. If he escaped now, and the Rangers took the city, he would get no mercy from them. They might throw a mock trial, bring to light his pirating and killing first, or they might just execute him right out. He could betray Festian in an attempt to gain leniency from this Ranger…

He could have gagged on the thought, and this reaction was surprising to him. Marcus didn’t care about Corone, not really. In the end, he rather disliked it and its people. But these Rangers, with their feverish idealism…and yet, here they would murder men of the City Watch, and why? These were not soldiers; they were peacekeepers, sworn to the safety of a city’s people.

Marcus was oblivious to his surroundings. Maybe he was the first person to attack, or maybe his sudden strike just lined up with a snap in the tension, but chaos erupted around him just as he drove Mycah’s sword into a Ranger’s groin. Arrows whipped and whistled and men screamed. Red was everywhere, but Book couldn’t tell if it was his rage-tinted vision or airborne blood.

He began retreating from anywhere men were gathered in attempt to escape the notice of the archers, who were firing into the melee. An elf with a shield gave chase, and opened with a deft stab that Marcus turned away with his borrowed blade. The sword was lighter than he was accustomed to, shorter and thinner, but it was more his speed than a dagger ever had been. As he deflected another quick stab, the templar mused that he’d never fought an elf before.

He turned the third attack low, then stepped close on the right side and shoved the hilt of his sword up. The cross-guard pierced the elf’s cheek before he could raise his shield and twist. He screamed, but his voice was curiously muffled by the guard. Marcus yanked the cross-guard free, brutally, and then leapt into the air as he spun clockwise and extended the blade. Even with the momentum the old, blunt blade only bit halfway through the elf’s neck, but it was enough to stop his screaming.

He’d never killed an elf, either. He had almost expected it to feel weightier, ending a larger number of potential years. In truth, it felt no different. Easier, even, once skill was bypassed.

Marcus claimed the corpse’s shield, and shook some blood from the sword hilt. An avenger came screaming, but Book was all cold determination now. The sword turned away a spear-thrust, the shield knocked teeth and blood loose, and the sword opened the throat. The spearman’s body went stiff as blood pumped rhythmically from his upraised chin, and then he fell backward. An arrow thudded into Marcus’ shield and he cursed, stumbling under the force of the impact.

A cry went up on the Ranger’s side, and it was answered by a roar. There were so many corpses already, dead men bristling with arrows. None of them seemed to be Rangers. Marcus hadn’t heard Callahan’s gun for some time, and Vanderbilt was…where was Vanderbilt? Marcus caught glimpses of Leeahn through the melee, locked in precise and intense combat with the Marshal, but the watchmen around him were steadily falling back, and dying beneath a fletched rain.

Book caught sight of a crossbowman and put himself close, shoving his way through the throng with his shield. “The archers!” he roared.

The crossbowman nodded his agreement, and shouted something that might have been, “Keep them off me!”

Marcus did that, turning away swords and spears as the man took careful aim again and again, backing steadily away from the center of the conflict. To his credit, he placed great trust in the templar. Again and again a Ranger would charge and Marcus would intercept him at the last moment, and the crossbow thrummed and an archer died screaming. The watchman did not look up as he loaded the quarrel and wound the winch, even as an arrow whistled just past his left ear.

He’s a dead man fighting, Book realized at some point. They all are.

The templar struggled to survive, to slaughter before he could be slaughtered, but the watchmen weren’t fighting for themselves, and more often than not the faces on their corpses showed proud resignation or peace over fear and pain.

It was so when Marcus turned and saw an arrow protruding from his ally’s throat. Even as he choked to death on wood and his own blood, the watchman shoved his crossbow to the templar’s feet. Marcus fired the last quarrel into the melee and caught a Ranger in the thigh, but he did not attempt to reload it.

“Bring him down! He’s going down!” one of the Rangers shouted, and somehow Marcus knew he meant Festian. He stabbed the Ranger in the back, but the shout was picked up here and there.

Book tripped over a corpse, and landed on three. They were all the city’s men. Through the bedlam, he heard a thunderous banging on the gate, and his heart sank.

The City Watch was quickly falling even in their headquarters, why hadn’t it occurred to him? If the entire city was under attack, every other target would fall faster than the Watch. Once they had the viceroys and the major nobles, they would convene on the Watch to reinforce the battle there…

…and now they were outside the door.

Death loomed. Marcus raised Mycah Downing’s sword, placed the Ranger’s shield in front of him, and charged forward to meet it head on, screaming.

[The Cinderella Man]

Fatigue was taking reign. Victor knew it, having experienced it so many times before, but this time there was a sense of urgency to it, as if it forgot to apply itself when it was supposed to and now was making up for lost time. It was a creeping weakness of the twelfth round of some slugfest washing over him like a sickly wave, sending cold shivers up his spine and into his extremities. Whatever zest he had sprinting down the length of the surrounding fortifications was seeping out of him at an accelerated rate. There was something odd about its nature, just as there was something odd at the burst of energy he had moments ago, but Victor was too stupid and too busy to figure it out. All he knew was that the moment of clarity was gone, and now his legs were heavier and his side hurt like a son of a whore. He could feel his wound opening and closing like an invisible mouth every time he moved, sending more blood down his side. It was only thanks to his stamina, thanks to all the years spent living the hard way, that he was still standing and ready to go a couple more rounds.

So when someone reinitiated the belligerence in the open yard of the City Watch fort, Victor readily joined the fray. He was halfway down from the battlements, four Rangers overhead like some odd lively gargoyles, releasing their arrows the second first metal met metal down below. Their aim was impeccable, but by the time the four missiles reached the walkway, the gunman was not there. Victor flung himself backwards from the perch, plummeting some good twenty feet, firing blindly towards the top of the walls. Time didn’t slow down. There was no sense of weightlessness. He struck the stack of crates and barrels below a blink of an eye after the jump, taking one of the archers down with a lucky shot. The remaining three didn’t lose composure. New arrows were already fished out of their quivers, their eyes never leaving the ex-boxer.

With no time to fish himself out of the splintered wood, Victor fired while lying down in an unholy mess of wood and rotten cabbage. One Ranger leapt back and away from the shots. One took a bullet in the eye. One had a clean killshot. But then Lady Luck winked in his direction and a bolt out of nowhere struck the Ranger in the gut and he stumbled out of sight, clutching for the wound. It gave Victor enough reprieve to crawl out of the rubble and back to his feet, wincing at the sharp pain in his side as he did so. Ahead of him, the yard was a scaled version of some battlefield, with less soldiers, less ground to cover, but what seemed like the same amount of blood and deathly outcries. But the yard wasn’t the main problem. Down below, they were pretty evenly matched with the Rangers. Up above, however, there were still over a dozen bastards with their deadly bows and keen eyes. It was up to Victor to nullify that advantage.

“All in a day’s work, I guess,” a tired thought passed through his head as he trudged forward through the mud. There was a tower shield leant against the armory shack to his side and he picked it up. It was an old, worn thing made of heavy oak, with most of its metal studs and plating gone to rust. Victor remembered the soldiers using it as a table surface for their midnight card games. Now, the bulky man used it to shove aside any obstacle in his way as he swung behind the armory and moved down the length of the walls, firing at those above. He was nowhere near proficient with the shield, but even an old galoot such as him understood the concept. Keep it up, shoot over or around it. And he could shoot. Oh yes, he could shoot.

But what he couldn’t do is shoot and cover his back at the same time. He was creeping his way below the walls, the barracks building on his left, when one of the Deputies jumped from behind the corner, sword swung in a wide horizontal arc aimed to cut him in half. He didn’t have enough time to ever turn his head, let alone the clunky shield. He was dead, mere fractions of a second away from the meeting with the grim reaper. Only he never felt the cold bite of metal. The advancing Deputy did, though. He had some of it sticking right out of his chest. Behind the body that was hastily growing limp, Erick Vanderbilt stood with one of his smarmy grins.

“Thought you could use a hand,” the man said. And even though his clothes were muddy and his hands bloody, he still didn’t look like he belonged here. Victor did like him a bit more at that moment, for whatever obscure reason. He offered a grin in return.

“Stay behind me.”

Moving together behind Victor’s shield (now looking a little bit like skin of a porcupine), they cleared a good portion of the wall behind the barracks and emerged on the other side of the complex. Again, Padre got that preemptive feeling of tides turning, of odds turning in their favor, and again it was taken from them.

Seeing his men knocked down like ducks in a carnival’s shooting gallery attracted the attention of the elven Marshal, despite the fact that he was engaged in a melee with Major Festian. But compared to his speed and prowess, Leeahn was slow and stiff, his form perfect but not flowing like the elf’s. Already he put a hole in Major’s thigh with his spear and opened a nasty gash above one of his eyes, all without taking a scratch. His spear was a sweeping blur, always on the move, always one step ahead of Leeahn saber, blocking it, parrying, keeping it an inch short of the mark. It was due to this superiority that he decided to break away and deal with the double nuisance beneath the walls.

“Left!” was all that Erick managed to shout when the Marshal came charging at them. Victor swung around and fired and did a pretty damn decent job at that as far as he could tell, but the elf could move. It seemed to Victor’s eyes that his target shifted positions in mid stride; for a moment he was a yard to the left, the other, a yard to the right, teleporting through the spray of bullets as if they were mere rocks thrown at him. He emptied the clip and hit nothing but air and stone walls on the other side of the fort, and then the Marshal was on top of them. He spun counterclockwise – with a blistering speed of spinning top – and knocked Victor’s shield with his foot, then spun the other way and sent Vanderbilt flying with the dull end of his spear. The bloodied point, though, was reserved for Padre, aimed for the heart and a quick kill. Vic’s reflexes strained the fatigued body one last time, pulling it downwards just enough for the spear to penetrate his shoulder instead. It was still enough to pin him against the rock wall, the spear tip digging into flesh and stone alike. He brought the pistol up, but the Marshal slapped it away effortlessly. He tried to bring the shotgun up, but that arm was busy being ripped through at the shoulder, and the sawed-off slipped out of his fingers and into the mud.

“This is it,” was all that Victor had time to think, pain exploding in his body like a ball of electricity, its tendrils spreading lightning-quick. “Game over. Bloody elves.”

As if to amplify his dying thoughts, the main gates of the Watchmen’s complex burst inwards, an exclamation mark to what most certainly didn’t turn out to be a solid day for Victor Callahan.

[The International]

The massive wrought iron gate gave way to a battering ram made of the flesh of a muscle bound Human Ranger who rolled forward in his last breath. Behind him lay a path of rose petals made of his life’s blood. It was truly befitting the entrance of a savior. Men clad in the colors of the Watch poured in, none without clear bruises, cuts or torn garments. It was the adrenaline of battle that kept Esme from finding other means of identifying individuals in the herd of Watchmen, but he named them after their most distinctive wounds in his head as he got arose and massaged his dislocated left shoulder. Arm gash, black eye, bad haircut… It counted. If a defining wound wasn’t present he would name them by their first actions. Charge, roll, scream like a bitch as an arrow pierces the thigh… It could have been way worse.

This was the entourage that escorted Lieutenant Allain Trefell, skin tainted by ash and body wrapped in torn rags until they created an almost regal garb. Perhaps it was that stained skin, ashen in the spirit of a Dark Elf, that compelled the Marshal’s eyes to grow wider than an Elve’s eyes were supposed to grow. Perhaps the complete turnaround in circumstances was ample reason, but it was enough of a distraction for the wily spy to capitalize on.

Esme pressed the balls of his feet into the ground and launched himself forward with his rapier reached out to his target, the high and mighty Marshal. A spear was great at keeping enemies at a distance with its extended blade, but once someone got past that blade there was little use for defense. Thanks to the Lieutenant’s grand entrance, Esme had snuck past it and the Marshal, who had turned around just in time to see a steel rapier shoot at him like a steel missile, was now in a panic. The Elf bent forward just enough to evade the attack, and retaliated by sending the elder wood shaft up to Esme’s face. The spy’s right temple bounced as the shaft and head met with a vengeance. He was knocked off balance by the hit, and what was worse he fell to the ground on his left shoulder, which was already in a world of pain.

The Marshal, despite his Elven patience had tolerated enough. He quickly stepped back and raised the blade of his spear. It hung directly over the pesky Human, who was hunched over in the fetal position. He silently sentenced the Imperial pawn to death, and proceeded to drop the spearhead like guillotine only to have it strike the ground and churn up blood stained pebbles and dust. Suddenly a crash of echoing thunder blasted his eardrums. As he looked down he could only wish it were thunder that he heard. It had been that advanced firearm wielded by the brute he had neutralized seconds ago. Only it wasn’t the brute that used it now. It was Esme on his back and in a world of pain from the massive shock of the firearm, and the shot had made a partial hit.

The plate armor that adorned the Marshal’s torso told it all. Tiny holes in the right kidney area began to leak scarlet. It didn’t kill him, but Festian’s blade did. With one silver horizontal strike the Marshals head was sent rolling. His headless body fell limp never to move again. Esme looked up at the leader of the City Watch, who was just as, if not more battered and bruised than he was. They shared an honorary nod as they realized the battle, however bittersweet, was won.

Now if someone could pop his shoulder back into place…

[Amen]

First the cry went up that the Marshal was down, but it spread slow. The Rangers didn’t want to believe it. When no contrary shout went up and it became undeniable, though, the Rangers began to sing a different tune.

Marcus yanked Downing’s sword from a man’s guts, dribbling blood on his own boot. His right shoulder was a ball of burning ache, and he wasn’t sure he could lift his blade arm again. His left shin twinged where a man had kicked him and his calf gave a spasm if he put too much weight on it. How he had come this far, he did not know, but he knew not much lay ahead of him one way or the other.

He turned sluggishly and raised his shield with not a little effort, and his bicep felt hollow. The Ranger before him was a boy with a spear, smudged with grime and blood and vomit and he reeked of piss, but still his eyes weighed the situation coolly. Maybe the boy had come into the Watch headquarters craven, but he was a man now. He had to be.

Book guessed the man wanted to go on living.

“Yield,” the Ranger said, and he hastily threw down his spear as if it burned him. “I yield.”

Marcus chanced to glance around him, and he saw the fight slowing. Rangers were throwing down their swords and shields, their spears, their bows, and submitting to their beleaguered opponents. The Watch had won.

The templar eyed the boy-turned-man, and glanced at the spear. Part of him – a large part, if truth be told – wanted to kill the Ranger unarmed or no. It was his unspoken rule: leave no man alive, once he threatens your life. Book looked at his borrowed sword, and then let his limbs sag.

“You’re lucky,” he said. “It seems I can’t lift my arm.”

***

Trefell oversaw the dismantling of the Ranger force while Leeahn Festian left the field to attend to the city at large. Arms were claimed and taken from the yard. Bodies were searched and separated. The injured were carried to triage no matter their loyalties, the mortally wounded given mercy. Those few Rangers that were not seriously injured submitted to search, escort, and temporary imprisonment in the brig. Later, when the Watch finally restored order, they would all be thoroughly questioned. Many would be executed.

“You’re on your feet,” Trefell said when he saw Marcus Book, and his eyebrows went up.

“You’re alive,” Book said. His voice was a raspy croak.

“I got lucky,” Allain said. “It’s a long story.”

“Another time, then. Seen Vanderbilt or the big one?”

The lieutenant nodded. “They’re alive, just barely. Mycah Downing, too. Looks like he slept through the worst of it.”

“Good,” Marcus said. “Good. Tell them…tell them it was a pleasure working with them.”

Trefell raised an eyebrow. “Any reason you can’t tell them yourself?”

“Have a meeting,” Book said. “Important guy. Can’t keep him waiting.”

“Even if you didn’t look ready to collapse, you can’t go anywhere. You need to be debriefed.”

But Marcus was already limping away. “Told you,” he was saying. “Important guy. Outranks you.”

***

The plush leather chair in Emien Harthworth’s study was exceedingly comfortable, and Marcus nodded off within seconds of falling into it. He jerked awake almost half an hour later when the viceroy entered, crossed the room straight-backed and composed, and sat himself down in the high-backed chair on the opposite side of the desk.

“You’ve had a very eventful day,” Harthworth said evenly, as if Marcus were not covered in sweat, dried blood, dirt, ash, soot, and flesh wounds.

“Somebody tried to kill me,” Marcus uttered huskily, far too exhausted to pretend at manners.

“It looks like quite a few people tried to kill you. Did you get hit on the head very much? I’d think you’d be used to attempts on your life by now.”

Book shook his head. “Man who claimed to be a rat gave me a job; he said it was from Sergio. Had to be a trap, it put me right in the middle of a Ranger shit-storm. It couldn’t have been Sergio, though, why show his hand? That leaves Sivien Arundiel. And it means he knew the Rangers were coming.”

Emien nodded thoughtfully, his fingers forming a steeple in front of him.

“Unless,” Marcus said.

“Unless?”

“Unless it wasn’t Arundiel. Unless it was you.”

Harthworth raised his eyebrows over icy cool eyes. “Me? What would I have to gain? You know I’m no friend to the Rangers.”

“Don’t know,” Marcus said. “But logic points at both the other viceroys and not at all at you, so it was probably you.”

Emien Harthworth never really smiled. His mouth could hint at a bemused smirk, but his pleasure was only really apparent in his eyes. “You’re smarter than my spies gave you credit for.”

“You’re not a traitor.”

“No,” the viceroy said.

“Why, then?”

The old general thought a moment before he spoke. “There is a watchman named Brian Osgood. His story is extremely common, which is why I mention him. Brian Osgood joined the City Watch because he idolized one man, the same man most of the citizens and soldiers in Corone idolize, the Rangers most of all.”

“Letho Ravenheart.”

“That’s the one. Before today, Brian Osgood was torn and confused. He is a loyal watchman, proud of his profession, but still him and his friends trade stories about the Grand Marshal in the mess hall. How can he serve the Imperial government loyally and unquestioningly when his hero is the quintessential Ranger?”

“Thought Ravenheart was missing,” Marcus rasped.

“Irrelevant. Letho Ravenheart is synonymous with the Rangers. That is the foremost problem in the matter of the rebellion. Even if he’s not leading the Rangers, he’s a symbol irrevocably attached to their movement. His actions color theirs in the mind of Corone’s people – the citizens, the Watch, everyone.”

“…you let the Rangers in.”

Emien nodded curtly.

“The other viceroys?”

“We didn’t arrange it, but we allowed it. Carefully,” Harthworth said. “The Watch would not have been allowed to fail. I’ve been moving men out of an infantry division and stationing them in plainclothes all over the city for the last month. If the Watch was overwhelmed, my soldiers would have stepped in.”

Marcus paused, and thought about it a moment. “You wanted to defame the Rangers.”

“Personal experience trumps popular third-party anecdote. Brian Osgood always heard the Rangers were heroic. He aspired to be like them, to serve the city of Radasanth the way he thought Letho Ravenheart would. Then he finally met the Rangers in the flesh, and they killed twenty of his closest friends and comrades before his eyes.”

“High cost just to make your enemies look bad,” Marcus said.

“Mister Book, I have one of the most powerful armies in the known world stationed outside my city walls unable to march,” the viceroy replied sternly.

Marcus nodded. “You can’t send them anywhere until your capital is secure. You couldn’t trust the City Watch to hold the city. And now you can.”

Emien smiled without smiling. “And now I can.”

“Doesn’t explain why I needed to be there,” Marcus said. “Plenty of easy, reliable ways to kill me. Could have sent Ardaen.”

“If the goal was to kill you, certainly.”

“So why? A test?”

Harthworth stared.

Marcus sighed and slumped in the chair, simultaneously disgusted and relieved.

“It was the last in a series of tests, in fact,” the viceroy said. “You didn’t die. You didn’t run. You didn’t defect.”

“And the others? Vanderbilt? Callahan?”

“The viceroys had their reasons for involving those men. All were carefully chosen.”

“More tests?” Marcus said.

“In part, for some. For others, like the one called Vanderbilt, a chance to study an unknown, though in that case I fear Corone is still blind to a larger game. Anyway, each of the viceroys had their reasons to involve who they did. This project has been in the working for months.”

“I’m still breathing, so I suppose I passed,” Book said with a sigh. “I still fail to see why I needed testing in the first place.”

“You haven’t figured it out yet? Maybe you’re not as smart as all that,” Emien grunted.

“It’s been a long day.”

“I just took a symbol away from the people of Corone, a rallying point,” Emien explained. “Now I intend to give them a new one.”

Requested Spoils: a targe Marcus took from an elf he killed at the Battle of the Watch during the Corone War. It's a decently large round shield at around 30 inches in diameter. The inside is thinly layered oak and eklan, with a layer of trakyam behind the boss. Four strategically-placed, thin dehlar plates are mounted on the front of the shield, and the entire thing is wrapped in tough boar hide fixed to the wood by dehlar nails. The boss is steel. There are two tough leather straps on the back of the shield for the arm, an empty leather sheath where a knife might be hidden, and a leather guige strap.

[The Cinderella Man]

The sound of a snappy salute plunged into the depths of Victor’s sleep and fished him out far too fast for his liking. Most likely some overeager sentry puffing out his chest and clicking his heels in a futile attempt to impress a senior officer, Victor reckoned. He knew where he was even without opening his eyes – he had been in and out of sleep for the last two days, sharing a room in the City Watch’s infirmary with a watchman who seemed to be burned to a crisp. Recovering, the robed monks said, their scent musty and their faces bland, from near fatal wounds. It was the blood loss that almost cost him dearly, that brought him to the point where even their clerical magic could barely bring him back. The mad rush back in the yard made him oblivious to it, adrenaline canceling it out in favor if action until there was nothing left to burn. But Victor was a tough old tomcat, so he was still hanging ‘round.

The orange-red blur that his closed eyes perceived told him that it was daytime, but he wasn’t interested in waking just yet. He still felt jaded, his muscles moaning in unison every time he tried to use them, so he simply rolled over and waited for the clicking of boot heels to fade away so he could resume his sleep. Only the sound didn’t diminish. It kept rising in strength until Victor was certain that there was an annoying pair of boots in front of his door. Two pairs maybe. He couldn’t be certain; echoes were funny in the hospital wards. And as if the boots weren’t enough, they were accompanied by a voice.

“Victor Callahan,” the voice said, and even through the drowsiness Victor had little trouble recognizing it. He opened his eyes to a squint, just enough to notice Leeahn standing in the doorway. “Alive and well, I see. Well, alive anyways.”

“Major,” Victor grumbled, forcing his eyelids another fraction of an inch up, then pushed himself up on the elbow of his uninjured arm. A thought clicked in his mind, reminded him that the other side was properly patched up by now, so he pushed up with the other elbow as well. “You look about how I feel.”

That wasn’t completely true. Leeahn Festian looked genuinely tired, that much was evident, his complexion unnaturally pale, a shadow around his eyes a silent witness to his lack of rest. But his attire was once again spotless, his beard neatly shaven, his boots still reflecting the world around them. It was like looking at a statue of some old hero that, even if some kids drew fake moustache on it and chipped one of its ears, still looked dignified, eternal.

“Yes, well, I’m not the only one.” The Major took two steps into the room and let Lieutenant Trefell in. The kid was trying to mimic his stoic superior, but he was failing miserably, his entire figure bent slightly to the left, favoring the side that didn’t get perforated by a crossbow bolt several days ago.

“Allain, hey, you made it,” Victor said, and not unkindly. In was the first time the smile on his face looked genuine, felt genuine and not just a faux mask for the public. The prizefighter pushed himself a bit further up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Compared to the two soldiers he looked comical in the loose patient’s robes, felt pretty ridiculous too. He always thought that either his schlong or his ass were visible in these robes. “I was sure you bought it back at the brothel.”

“I almost did. Graham and Hewitt pulled me out just in time. They came from around the back once they heard the commotion.” The two names meant nothing to Victor, but he assumed they were the two posted at the postern entrance, the two sons of bitches that seemed more ready to bury the young lieutenant than offer due assistance. “They’re not half as bad as I thought, really. Neither is that Marcus fellow for that matter. He sends his greetings, by the way.”

“Yeah, well, when the shit starts to fly, that’s when you usually see who’s your pal,” Victor said. A yawn came upon him, and when it reached its peak, it turned into a mild cough. He got it under control, then added: “Speaking of that...The Vanderbilt fellow? Is he around? I think I owe that man a drink at least.”

“Haven't seen him after he picked up his wages,” Leeahn said. Victor wasn't surprised. That was the way of the mercenary. Camaraderies that didn't last, debts that remained unpaid, toast remained unspoken. The names stuck around, as did the faces, but they faded away like worn parchments in the rain. And after a while all you could remember was some odd fellow that saved your skin on a strange day in Radasanth. Victor brushed the thoughts away, focused on Allain instead.

“That was some entrance you made back there.”

“I was lucky,” the lieutenant said, some of his insecure shyness creeping into his facial lines. “We ran into some patrolmen as we made our way back to the Headquarters, and then met up with what was left of the group from the docks. We figured something went sour, so we sped home.”

“A lot went sour today. But it could’ve been worse,” Festian finally spoke again, his voice traditionally bland and almost devoid of emotions. “You did well. Now, leave us. I have things to discuss with Mister Callahan.”

“Sir!” Allain Trefell didn’t hesitate, snapped a rigid salute and then turned on his heel.

“Hey, kid!” Victor stopped him. Seeing the lieutenant again dropped a massive load of guilt off the ex-con’s heart and he had to make it known. “It’s good to see you alright.”

Allain smiled and nodded minutely, then vacated the room.

“Nice lad. Might be going places,” Victor said to Leeahn with a grin.

“He might. Ordeals such as these make or break a man. They certainly made you, Callahan,” the officer said, hands meeting behind his back and he moved towards the window. He pulled the curtain a bit further back to let additional sunlight that made Victor cringe.

“Made me what? Almost a cripple? Almost dead?”

“A trustworthy man.”

“Well, that was always my dream. For the head honchos to trust me. Now, I can die a happy man knowing that the Empire trusts me. By the way, which way to the main treasury?” Victor snorted a laugh, but Leeahn, never a man known for a sense of humor, didn’t respond in kind. There was a long pause, interrupted only by the muffled moaning of the burned guard who was wrapped in so many bandages that he seemed ready for mummification. Then the Major finally spoke, without turning away from the sunny day.

“I have a new detail for you.”

“If it’s anything like the last one, I’m not sure I’m interested,” Victor said. He let himself drop to the floor, his bare feet hitting the cold tiles below, then moved to pour a glass of water from the pitcher at the nightstand. “There are certainly easier way to earn coin in Radasanth. Safer ways.”

“There are. And I cannot make you take this assignment. But I think you might be interested. Here...” Leeahn finally turned back towards Victor, who was still hunched over the stand, gulping down his second glass of water. All the drinking only reminded him that he had to take a vicious piss.

The Major reached inside his jacket, then tossed a file on the bed, together with a hefty leather pouch that landed with a familiar rattle of coins. “We need you to put together a group of mercenaries and hunt down this man. The intelligence believes him to be behind this last attack.”

Victor flipped the file open absently, skimmed over the basic information, then closed it back up and checked the pouch instead. It was heavier than usual. Getting skewered by a Ranger seemed to earn him somewhat of a bonus. “And I would be interested in this guy... why exactly? I don’t know him.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain. He might be what you’ve been looking for all along.” A faintest trace of a smirk appeared on Leeahn’s face.

“He has information on Walter Jimes?”

Walter godsdamned Jimes. Walter Jimes was the reason why Victor was working for the City Watch in the first place. Walter had been a hot shot panderer of high class prostitutes back in the day before Victor’s jail time. He had hired Victor as protection for one his ladies, but fate is a fickle thing, especially when combined with human nature. You put two reasonably attractive people together and keep them like that long enough, and affection was imminent. Walter Jimes wouldn’t have it. Walter Jimes shot Aicha in the head and framed Victor for the murder. Framed him, for the murder of the woman he had grown to love. There was no greater vendetta than one sworn over lost love. And ever since that day, Victor was on a crusade to end Walter Jimes. But Walter was a slimy, slippery thing, and ever since his nemesis came out of the prison, he had made himself scarce. Leeahn offered him information in return for his services with the Watch, and now he seemed to be staying true to his word. This was the first solid lead Victor got in years.

He took the file again, then noticed that Leeahn still had the grin on like a bad omen.

“No, Callahan,” the Major finally said. “He is Walter Jimes.”

[The International]

The construction site of the Silver Pub was a healthy walk away from the safe house Kyle Barthom made his home these days. Half way across the urban landscape that sprouted from the Niema River like an ash tree was a long way, and since it was a secretive rendezvous, his boss didn’t allow him and his shadow lurking body guard to go on horseback. Luckily for them there were no market crowds to push through, no Elven refugees to toss a coin to, and no hot ass sun to shield themselves from since it was nearly three in the morning. But that was the problem – it was nearly three in the morning for Thayne’s sake. What kind of game was this merchant family playing sending for Walter Jimes in at this ungodly hour?

The name was familiar, Villeneuve. They owned a ship and stopped into Corone once a season, throwing a party here and there and mainly dealing in resource trading. After about a month they were of to the next country. Their sigil was the fox, the trickster of the animal kingdom. Perhaps that was why Walter didn’t come himself, Kyle thought as he turned the corner onto 4th Street. Along the row of giant brick dominos that sat along the street was the mere timber frame of one yet to be completed. It belonged to the legendary Silver Pub, place of heroes and adventurers… my ass. For the last five years the Silver Pub had been sold, bought, renovated, burned down, built back up blown up, and rebuilt again. After a while it became impossible to keep track of its status and who it belonged to. Thus in that sense it truly was the place of heroes.

“Find a shadow, but stay close.” Kyle said as his boots left the stone of the streets and pressed into the soft soil of the construction site. The fresh timbre compelled him to sneeze, but he resisted. They could be watching… and they were.

“Where’s Walter Jimes?” A smooth feminine voice came from the right as a woman stepped into the fluttering light of the streetlamp closest to the site. She tossed her rose red hair to one side and it twisted into one giant lock as she leaned onto one of the wooden columns. Her shoulders were the color of the summer leaves, and she wore a columbine flower over her left ear as blue as Am’aleh’s sea. For a moment, Kyle had to question whether this was a goddess, but no goddess he’d heard of had a curved Akashiman blade sheathed across the small of her back and a brown whip at her curvy left hip.

“How did you know I wasn’t him?” Kyle asked, startled as he gazed into eyes that combined the bronzed earth and the baby blue sky. It was her response that made him finally realize how much he had built her up in his own mind.

“Um. I didn’t.” The woman rolled her eyes and lifted her hands in a quizzical gesture as she laughed. “But you just told me, didn’t you?”

“State your business.” Kyle was not amused. He straightened up to look as intimidating as possible in his cloak.

“Ah. Of course.” Alix sent him a courteous smile. “Direct man, you are. We just thought we should send him a word of warning, villain to villain.”

“Villain?” Kyle peered off into the distance with a pair of amber eyes. “We?”

“Yes. We.” A voice as deep as the roar of thunder vibrated through him as a man emerged from the shadows deep within the construction site. His jade blades of eyes were as jovial as they were piercing as he smiled through his well kept beard. His princely cut hair matched his princely white tunic, and his princely brown vest matched his princely brown pants. For a moment, Kyle had to question whether this was a Radasanth noble, but then realized that he had perception problems. The man continued. “We felt like we owe it to him since the Empire’s troops are on their way out of Radasanth.”

“Are you with the Rangers?” Kyle pepped up like an excited puppy at the sight of a doggy treat. He and his boss, with their band of thieves, gangsters, murderers, and even rapists, found redemption with the Rangers and their fight against the Empire establishment. Perhaps this was news of impending liberation of Corone’s capital.

“No.” The princely man said firmly. “But the hub of the Empire is vulnerable thanks to him, so we felt like we should return the favor.”

“Leeahn knows it was Walter Jimes who coordinated the attack.” The woman said, now with her bangs casting an ominous shadow over her eyes. Kyle didn’t like that look any more than he liked the news.

“How does he know?” His voice lowered accordingly.

“We tittle-tattled...” The princely man shrugged his shoulders, but followed with an oow as he massaged one of them. “I was on the wrong end of that little fiasco just hoping to have a calm day, some decent pay, and a little time away from this Civil War foray… That rhymed, didn’t it? Luckily we survived and won, but afterwards my wife and I spent a few days asking around, interrogating… cutting… choking… stabbing…”

“I think he gets it, Love.”

“You get it! Anyways.” The man shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped forward. “Send Walter a message from Alix & Esme Villeneuve. Letting a bad man do bad things for a good cause isn’t going to get anyone into Y’edda’s Garden.”

Kyle’s heart pounded on his ribcage like a massive bass drum on his chest as he looked into the stars and tried to grasp the gravity of the situation. All the while his right hand emerged from the slit of his cloak and signaled his guard. These traitorous merchants would hear the guard coming if he didn’t distract their ears. “I think my boss wouldn’t mind if I took it upon myself to shake you two loose of the mortal coil. Well… I’ll shake you loose, old man. We’ll be taking her back with us. She’ll make a fine whore for Radasanth’s Red Lamp district.” With a sudden thud and the ring of an emerging blade, a cloudy short sword stood with its edge lightly pressed at the woman’s throat. Kyle continued. “Unless you’d rather her die instead of spending a lifetime being fucked for sport.”

This wasn’t the first time Kyle posited that conundrum as his goon held a pretty woman’s life in his hands.

The princely man stood without sway, but he dropped his head and shook it in shame. “You just sealed your man’s fate.”

A hissing sound came from the ruby headed woman as she sported a blank but terrifying gaze. Kyle’s bodyguard dropped his jaw as his blue eyes went wide and his pupils dilated. He felt around his face and found that a fuzzy white thorn had dug into his cheek. His last image must have been the flower that had launched it. A hollowed out echo of the four winds came from the black cavern of his mouth as he dropped to his knees and fell to the ground with a body more limp than a doll. Kyle’s head coursed with pain as he struggled to hold in his urge to scream. He barely even noticed the pointed edge of a rapier that mirrored the stars and nebulae probing at his abdomen, but when he did he locked eyes with the one named Esme, who said. “I’m going to ask the Watch to leave you alive so my wife can use your soul for food just like she did your partner.

…Run.”

[Knave]

And lo, the sage did descend from his mountain, in his arms ten scriptures bearing his mind, and in his heart he held humility. The bilious wraths on short effort and long strain, he had spoken them, and felt his hands tremble ‘neath their sway,
yet now, he knew something different.

Plot Construction ~ 23/30

Story ~ 9/10 – Well…goddamn it, near everything is there and in its place! You all have a good idea of the usual business, so I doubt I’ll have to summarize before I start. The greatest questions of who the characters are and why they are answered immediately, the entrance of every character exiting the daily business of their own lives to join together on this new day. From the get go the plot is alert, at attention, and eager to get started, and the blood promptly flows seven steps into this adventure. Once the initial fighting is done, and the party departs on the trail of one very loose thread, the suspense is used very well in keeping the reader interested with false starts to a bloody action. What impresses me most? You actually took the time to wrap up the loose ends after the climax, and sent everyone off in their proper directions. The only places that I felt went improperly attended were the ones without names, the transitions. The transitions between once major location and the next are actually fairly sparse and full of thoughts on prior events when the transitioning in itself is an event and could have been put to better use. Oh and during the fight scene, I hope it was intentional that TI skip a post, as the wild card I am glad to see I saw little of Esme until he was back in the action.

Strategy ~ 8/10 – Let’s start with the problem, this is Victor’s story. Your characters are all very well incorporated into the plot of this thread, and everyone here plays a position which is natural to them. Some were more complex than others, but nothing came off as awkward, though I have my suspicions about how Marcus Book gets a meeting with a high (very high) government official. It necessary for any of the pieces to come together, but Marcus Book carries on from his religious order like a lower officer, and beyond Victor that is exactly the thing, the characters enter as mercenaries, all but Victor feel a bit foreign; in the cobbles of those streets their histories lie shallow.

Setting ~ 6/10 – This was present in a noticeable force early on, but fell to the wayside to thoughts and feelings. It actually grew weaker, particularly over the aforementioned transitional posts. External sensations were in the minority, the same for internal sensations except that while I was told what they were feeling often I had no idea how they were feeling it. TI, I liked your descriptions of people, short and sweet and still on point, a few of them were a bit odd because of word choice, but I wish you had employed this kind of convention more often. Simply put, early on, I didn’t get sound and picture, it soon seemed to be an either or kind of deal.

Characterisation ~ 24/30

Continuity ~ 7/10 – Marcus Book…carries on like a low rank officer, fit to act alone, but not to command a larger force, so at what point does the chain of command vanish to allow him to sit with the viscount? I’ve read a certain few posts, checked his history on more than one occasion, it’s the hardest point to get down among them. It had to happen, I know, but just the same.

Outside of that, everyone’s knowledge of Althanas was present in one form or another and was duly noted alongside such things as “decent dialogue!”, and the story itself is one I like fore the fact that it is a story of Althanas that is hip, happening, and knows what’s up in a very modern sense. I can just imagine little AIM conversations asking for references at 2:00 AM.

The only problem is with the viscount’s plan. This is the keystone that wraps up everything, and while I don’t know the viscount, the idea of letting a large fighting force into a fortified city to make a moral victory is insanity. But, I don’t know the viscount.

Interaction ~ 7/10 – This was fun! This was often! This had a point! And you guys did it together!

All the characters existed at nearly all times in the same event, if not world, often referencing each other, though I am against any lengthy paragraph where one character searches his feelings for another person he’s only just met. The dialogue and actions that were most entertaining were most often shared with NPCs, however, the character every other character gets to experience directly was Victor.

Every character has at least one memorable moment where they had to go beyond simply being there and being themselves to deliberately change the course of the story entirely, and sometimes unpredictably, that is wonderful.

On the world: Gotta level with you, the single largest interaction between PCs and NPCs was the killing, and at worst it was done in flash rather than HD. A lot of it actually, but bulk can only do so much. Motions described, actions performed, the fight scenes overall, were lacking depth or description using packed lines (factual statements after the fact) to tell the reader everything and show little in the movement forward. Some were simply implausible or missing the steps, I don’t care who you are, you are not able to wrap your legs around a man’s chest and perform a sit up to simultaneously bite off a bit of nose and cheek, and no one is stunned still by that. This is what I’m looking at most because that’s what your character spent most of your time doing. Also, for people who take a lot of uncomfortable dives from high places to hard, these characters get up and go at a surprising pace.

As NPCs: You guys, all of you, have a good skill for the content of your dialogue. As far as their personal actions, there were few, and being secondary characters I don’t really expect them to be rendered into the same mental/physical clarity through their words and actions as the regular PCs. Of course, that’s all while they are alive. Once the NPCs die, though, they lose a lot of their character if they had any at all, and the sentence’s largely end before their bodies touch the ground. This is one of the things that make the picture hazy in the mind, you don’t have to dwell philosophically, but please allow causality to take its place.

As writers: The bunnying was unannounced, and its first use that I recall was utterly confusing. Marcus Book had acknowledged that Victor was in danger, but was in the midst of saving himself before he could save anyone else, ending his post struggling to get out from under a corpse. Next post, he’s free again and thrown a knife through some poor, faceless goon’s spine. Other than that, this worked in your favor, because for some brief moments you guys co-authored a story rather than performing various and separate roles. I would like more of this.

Character ~ 10/10 – Victor Callahan will likely always have a place in memory for his interrogation scene, it was done well, and the only part I felt I had totally seen before was the sightless gun blast to the torso. Very cool, very done though. The opening post is the first defining moment, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Esme…smooth talking, prancing, manipulative, magnificent bastard. Seriously though, he plays the role of a spy well even when he’s not currently being a spy, as he sets up the placing for the final showdown, it showed the kind of insincere, smarmy, crackerjack he can be. Oh, and never use Negative Nancy. It’s a hideous line largely unsuited for any situation except for comedic.

Marcus…you need to spend less time using your sword arm or more time making each stroke a bit more striking. I’m not actually being fair right now because your co-authors each placed their character into a high tension moment that was absolutely relevant to the problems at hand. In the future, your contributions can be much larger by doing the same…or talking to other characters more. You can do it huge and hard scenes, as Cinderela did, or allow for an undercurrent of personal quirks and attitudes.

Writing Style ~ 21/30

Creativity ~ 7/10 – Y’know, the very name of this category is misleading… However, carrying on, while the overall plot was dandy, the uncommon, technical conventions of writing went unseen by my eyes. These are the glitter, and the biggest shining diamond I can think of is the large metaphor at the very beginning of this thread and the returning arc words that each time they appeared carried new meaning, hope, uncertainty, fear, and grim satisfaction.

Mechanics ~ 6/10 – You guys wrote a lot, this will magnify the number of possible errors. And I can tell you that I can spot the heavy handed use of a spell-checker. A spell checker does not know that you meant “is” when you typed “in”.

Clarity ~ 7/10 – There were moments, moments where the night and day were not in perfect celestial equity, and your posts lost all meaning, forcing me to return, hurled backward through time and space with a snap and a “wut?”.

Wildcard: 7/10 An excellent job, sirs. This is the best thread I’ve judged since joining staff, and I’m so very happy seeing all this, and not seeing a single five on this page. You made the effort. Thank you.

Total ~ 75/100

Amen will receive his shield! 810 exp!300 gold!

Requested Spoils: a targe Marcus took from an elf he killed at the Battle of the Watch during the Corone War. It's a decently large round shield at around 30 inches in diameter. The inside is thinly layered oak and eklan, with a layer of trakyam behind the boss. Four strategically-placed, thin dehlar plates are mounted on the front of the shield, and the entire thing is wrapped in tough boar hide fixed to the wood by dehlar nails. The boss is steel. There are two tough leather straps on the back of the shield for the arm, an empty leather sheath where a knife might be hidden, and a leather guige strap.

The International is to receive 810 exp! 300 gold!

Cinderale MAN is to receive 900 exp! And for a job done bloody well, 450 gold! Go buy some fresh bandages, you’ve earned them!

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.