The crowd broke up, everyone preparing for the coming assault. The doors were barred and guarded against any word’s getting out and the cellar store room doors were thrown open – the doors to the armoury hidden below. Geffen crossed the room, the savage narrow slit of his mouth set. Some hireswords stopped him to swear their loyalty; he acknowledged them, then pushed onward. Lee saw where he was headed and joined him.
The two stood staring down at the foreign knifer, Cowl, alone at his table. The young man was mutely clapping, offering his ironic applause. ‘All hail the possible new ruler of Malaz,’ he said. ‘But I think you’re forgetting one thing – what about his pet mage?’
Geffen lifted his bony narrow shoulders, unconcerned. ‘I think she might like to know what lover boy’s been up to all these years.’ Then he waved the subject aside, scowling with undisguised distaste. ‘Things have changed. I no longer require your services – wretched as they have proved to be. Our contract is void.’
The lad pressed his hands flat against the tabletop, dropped his sardonic smile. ‘That would be ill advised. Drag me here only to dismiss me?’ He shook his head at the magnitude of the mistake.
Lee was feeling the confidence of the company of some fifty toughs and hireswords; she leaned over the table and jerked a thumb to the door. ‘Pack your stupid little bag and get your useless arse out of here.’
She did not know what to expect, but it wasn’t the sudden laugh and the hands thrown up in mock surrender. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘I should be mad but I’m not. Because I’m grateful to you. If you hadn’t brought me here then I wouldn’t have found the real potential hidden on this wretched island. Power just waiting for someone daring enough and strong enough to take it.’
Geffen waved him down, as if he wasn’t worth his time. ‘I’m taking it, arsehole.’ He marched off.
Cowl watched him go, murmuring, ‘I’m not talking about the Hold, fool.’
Lee hesitated. ‘The house, you mean … you gonna try to enter it?’
The mage’s gaze remained aside, following Geffen. ‘Someone will, and soon. It’s in the air. It’s why powers are gathering here. It’s like a lodestone.’
‘What do you mean … powers?’
The young mage made shooing gestures with his hands. ‘Go away, little bird. This does not concern you. But, by way of advice, I suggest you keep your head down.’
Lee waved him off as Geffen had done and turned to the jammed room. ‘All right!’ she shouted, ‘Went, Quilla, Donner – pick five men each. You’re with me.’ She headed for the door. ‘Let’s go.’
She hated to rush, but they had to strike quickly before word got to the Napans. That gal in charge, the servitor Surly, struck Lee as canny; she might have taken the precaution of buying an informant among their hirelings, so they had to act now.
They closed on the waterfont and Smiley’s bar. She sent Went ahead with his team to move in from the rear once they heard the rest entering at the front. She motioned Quilla forward, half mouthing, ‘Take the door.’
‘No lookouts,’ one of the hired knife-fighters observed, sounding uneasy.
Quilla’s boys kicked the door open and charged in. Lee waited, tensed, with Donner and his team. The crash of breaking furniture and crockery sounded from within, but no clash of blades or bodies. She edged in the doorway; the common room was dark and empty. Quilla came down the stairs, shaking her head. ‘Gone. All gone. ’Cept for one,’ and she gestured to the bar.
Lee crossed to where a young woman lay atop the counter, legs straight, hands crossed on her chest: Amiss, the youngest of the Napan crew.
She set her hands on her hips. What in Mael’s name…? Tentatively, she reached out to raise one shoulder and there she found the wound – stabbed in the back through to the heart, one expert thrust. Without taking her eyes from the corpse she asked, ‘Gef put out any kill orders?’
‘Not one,’ Quilla answered. ‘In fact, we was definitively told no bloodshed – for now.’
Lee nodded at her lieutenant’s words. ‘That’s what I thought.’ She let the shoulder fall – stiffening, yes, but still a touch warm. Must’ve been within the evening.
‘We burn the place now?’ Donner asked, eager.
Lee had to restrain herself from cuffing the hulking fellow. ‘No, we don’t burn it! It’s ours now, innit? They’ve run off.’ She backed away from the bar, nodded to Quilla, ‘Hold the building,’ then went upstairs.
The empty office was a mess of papers, most of them covered in shadowy drawings of obscure landscapes and mysterious charts of some kind involving multiple overlapping circles marked with hen-scratchings of dates and places; Lee couldn’t make head or tail of it all. Other than that, the place was a mess: drawers pulled out and upturned in a quick search for valuables, broken glass and bits and pieces on the floor. Every step was a grating crackle of shards. After one last scan of the shabby place she returned to the main common room and waved her people to follow.
Outside, she raised a hand to shade her gaze against the spitting rain. Someone was stirring up a blood-feud, and she thought she knew who. The damned little smirking shit.
She squinted north, up to the black silhouette that was the Hold. Dark now; no watchfires. Was Geffen there already … and just where had the damned Napans fled to?
She spat aside, swearing, and motioned everyone onward. ‘C’mon, y’damned useless layabouts – we’re for the Hold!’
*
They jogged up the twists and turns of the steep Rampart Way up the cliff to the Hold, losing steam about halfway and labouring up the rest of the distance through the chill rain, only to be greeted by the hunchbacked gatekeeper Lubben, sitting under the stone arch of the entry tunnel, a lantern on an iron hook next to him. The old fellow was leaning back and drinking from a pewter flask.
‘Is Geffen within?’ Lee demanded of the old souse, brushing the cold wetness from her face.
The grey-haired fellow screwed up one bloodshot eye to squint at her. ‘Aye.’
‘Any Napans show up here?’
He shook his long hound’s head. ‘No.’
‘Fine.’ She motioned to Went. ‘You stay here and watch the gate with your boys.’
‘Not necessary,’ Lubben objected, but lazily, without even stirring in his chair.
Lee dismissed him with a wave and headed onward into the dark and empty bailey. She crossed the wet cobbles to the doors to the main keep and found them ajar. Donner, next to her, had his light crossbow readied and she took it from him and motioned for him to push open the stained iron-bound door. This he did, then jumped back while she stepped in, crossbow raised.
She faced a long main hall, empty, but lit brightly from far within by what must be a roaring fire. Donner and his toughs readied their knives and clubs. Fresh wet mud marred the fieldstone flags. She crept inward, a finger on the crossbow’s tiller-bar.
Raucous laughter sounded from beyond; a godsdamned celebration. She crept up to the end of the hall and leaned into the room, sighting down the crossbow stock, then let the weapon fall.
The main audience chamber was crowded with Geffen’s toughs. They’d cracked open kegs and were now at the long tables carousing. Sighting her, a number cheered and waved her in.
‘What in the Abyss is this?’ she snarled, and cuffed away a proffered tumbler of wine.