Act of Will

SCENE XXXVI Investigations

We spent the morning staring at a map marked with the location of each raider attack. Right in the middle, just on the Greycoast side of the Shale border, was the mark of a small castle.

“What’s that?” said Lisha.

“I’ll find out,” said Mithos. “The raiders must have an operations base in the area. Maybe that’s it.”

“Track down the three Joseph addresses,” said Lisha to Orgos. “See if any of them looks big enough to house troops or stolen property.”

The Hopetown marketplace was a very different kettle of fish from the one in Ironwall: professional hard selling everywhere you looked. You could have bought anything you wanted there, and a lot of stuff you didn’t. The stall keepers shouted, intimidated, and just plain lied to make a sale, gracelessly thrusting coins into a chest before the customers could change their minds. The barefaced economics of it all just wasn’t my style. I was glad to see Orgos strolling over to speak to me.

“We have found all three of the ‘Joseph’ houses,” he said. “Renthrette and Garnet have spent the morning checking out the addresses and they think one of them is empty. We’re going now.”

“You mean, breaking in?”

“Yes. Just to look around.”

“You’re sure it’s empty?”

“Positive.”

“And we’ll be in absolutely no danger?”

“None at all.”

“I’m your man.”

Mithos told us to be very careful, and made some not wholly complimentary remarks about my being wiry and thus well suited to housebreaking. I don’t think he believed I hadn’t done it before.

The house belonging to Mr. Brineth Joseph was in a poor suburb of town. It was made of timbers that had warped and splintered away from their rusty nails like the scales on a rotting fish. By now it would probably have been cheaper to torch the place and start over. We found a downstairs window unlocked and clambered in; not exactly maximum security, but then, as we quickly discovered, there was bugger-all worth stealing.

There were two bedrooms upstairs and a little kitchen-bakery on the ground floor. They obviously sold bread in the market. The furniture was basic, and the clothes were few and threadbare. Several of the interior doors were missing, probably burned when the weather turned cold.

“Palatial,” I muttered. “If they are bandits, they’re really bad at it.”

Orgos picked up a tiny pair of boy’s shoes whose heels were worn to nothing. He just looked at them and said nothing. I sighed, a little irritated that these people’s poverty should take the edge off our adventure. The bakery was clean but poorly stocked, and the flour was coarse and cut with chalk in fine old Cresdon style. There was no sign of anything remotely suspicious.

“Ah, the thrifty lower classes,” I said sardonically as we slipped out. “Salt of the earth.”

“Don’t make light of poverty,” said Orgos. “It kills more than the raiders ever will.”

“Really?” I said. “How interesting. Having been destitute most of my life I never would have known that.”

Orgos didn’t reply. Sentimental idiot.

Mithos was pleased with our report.

“Well, we can cross that one off the list,” he said.

We would have to watch the other two houses closely. I suggested breaking in by night, but this was generally considered an extraordinarily bad idea, even by my standards.

“So we just sit around and wait?” I said.

“Until we get a better lead,” said Mithos.

And, right on cue, we got a better lead. Orgos burst into Lisha’s room, where the rest of us had gathered, and tossed a curved knife on the bed.

“Look at that,” he exclaimed. “Familiar?”

“Not to me,” I muttered, wondering why I felt a thrill of alarm whenever Orgos got excited about weapons.

“It’s kind of like the scyax that we looked at,” said Garnet, picking it up and holding it up to the light.

“The same steel,” said Orgos triumphantly. “The same workmanship.”

“Where did you get it?” asked Lisha.

“I was stocking our weapons chest in the marketplace and came upon a stall that sold nothing but this stuff. The stall keeper was reluctant to tell me where he got his material, but I persuaded him. He is supplied exclusively by a weapons dealer known locally as the Razor. He pays certain traders in town well above the average for the best ores and sells his exclusive wares to whoever can afford them.”

We were about to ask more when Mithos came in hurriedly. He pointed to the center of the map again.

“That building in the middle of the map?” he said. “It’s a keep. A fortification belonging to one Eric Thurlhelm, known as the Razor.”

We were dining in the same tavern we’d been at since we reached Hopetown. Renthrette was watching one of the Joseph houses and Orgos had returned to the market for supplies, but I was eating steak and kidney pie and swilling it down with a dark, mellow beer, half bitter, half mild. Mithos took a forkful of steak and told me what he knew.

“I spoke to a garrison officer,” he said. “Thurlhelm, the Razor, moved here from Thrusia shortly after it fell to the Empire. He is rich. He pays his taxes and keeps himself to himself. The duke doesn’t ask about his past operations, where he gets his money from, or how he amuses himself at present. The keep is larger than his requirements, since he lives alone save for a few friends, various female companions, and a sizable staff of servants. He has a resident defense unit of about thirty men. I think it’s time we checked him out-cautiously. The Razor runs his house as he pleases and we can expect rough justice from him if we get on his nerves. We can also expect trouble from the duke, who won’t want to lose the tax revenue unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“What a prince,” I said, dark memories of the scaffold in Ironwall haunting me briefly.

“Quite.”

“Has anybody given any thought,” I said, figuring it was time we addressed this, “to how the raiders are able to get from wherever they are to the site of an attack without anybody seeing them and without. ”

Mithos was staring across the room, oblivious to me. By the empty fireplace a man was sitting at a table. He had his back to us but his head was turned slightly in the way people do when they are trying to listen in on someone else’s conversation. Mithos was motionless except for his left hand, which was moving silently for the small crossbow on the floor by my chair.

I watched in confusion as he pulled the weapon onto his lap and cocked it with one deft motion, his eyes still fixed on the stranger. Then he opened his left palm and extended it towards me.

“What?” I murmured.

“A bolt,” he breathed, barely audibly.

I reached behind me uncertainly, took hold of the feathered end of a quarrel, and drew it out of the bag. But my eyes were on Mithos and as I passed it to him, another one slid out and clattered to the stone floor.

Suddenly the man leapt to his feet and spun around, raising a pair of small crossbows, one in each hand and pointed directly at us. His eyes were dark and cold, his mouth set, and I knew that he meant to kill us.

Mithos turned the table over, sending the crockery crashing to the ground and pulling me down behind it with him. There was a slight swish and one bolt cracked into the tabletop as the other slammed into the wall behind us. I felt the wind in my hair as it passed.

Mithos dived to the right, rolled once, and aimed the crossbow. Our would-be assassin had fled. Mithos went after him, but the streets were a maze. He could have gone anywhere.

Or he could have just vanished like the raiders always did, even when they were dead.

Mithos returned, breathing hard, and plucked the crossbow bolt from the tabletop. It was flighted with crimson feathers.