Chapter Three
Arrival
The 12 Line train rumbled along toward Ja-Wen, the chuff and screech of its wheels over the tracks unheard inside the passenger cabins within the cars connected one to the next. While Anna, Norman, Calvin and Jerry napped, Flint Ananham saw to an opportunity to try and see about getting himself some food. Gently removing himself from his seat next to the window, Flint slid the compartment door open and stepped nimbly out into the hallway.
As he brought the door closed, he felt a sudden drop in the air temperature to his left. Without thinking, one of his long knives was in his hand in a flash, the tip held low. He turned his body, and found himself looking down at Akimaru, the Midnight Suns’ white-clad Ninja. Though Markus Trent presumably held the public position of second-in-command of the guild, Flint possessed enough savvy to know that if Thaddeus Fly ever went the way of the galama bird, Akimaru would slip silently into the position of command.
Likely over Trent’s mangled corpse.
Flint offered Akimaru a toothy grin, running his free hand over his whiskers. “Sorry about the jumpiness, friend,” he offered.
“No need for apologies, Mr. Ananham,” Akimaru said. He lifted one of his hands, the tip of Flint’s long knife caught deftly between two fingers. “Your reflexes are only natural and habitual. I am impressed enough that you were able to draw on me before sensing my presence.” He released the knife, which Flint put back in the brace around his waist. “What moves you from the company of Mr. Deus?”
Flint’s gut chose that moment to emit a trembling rumble. His mouth open, Flint straightened himself up and shrugged his shoulders. “Pretty obvious, I should think.”
“Indeed. Shall I join you?”
“As you like,” said Flint. The Wererat and the white-clad Ninja moved back along the aisle to the dining car, the booths already mostly packed by the other first-class passengers. A slender Illeck girl, looking bored beyond belief, approached them with a pair of menus in hand. She led the two men toward a small booth, each agent taking a seat across from one another, and handed them their menus.
“Drinks first?”
“Ice water, thank you,” said Akimaru.
“Coffee for me,” Flint said, already poring over the contents of the menu. When the girl stepped away, he looked up at the Ninja. “Always with the cold with you, eh?”
“It is in my nature, Mr. Ananham,” replied Akimaru.
“So’s hiding your face. How do you intend to eat in a public dining cart without anybody seeing your mug?” Akimaru reached down for a moment, and produced a small ivory-colored card with curly symbols drawn on it. “Wossat?”
“A ninpo, Mr. Ananham. Much like the Monks’ sutra cards, it is inscribed with mystic Ninja power.” The Illeck girl returned with their drinks, pulling out a pad and pen for their orders. Akimaru asked if she could bring him a chicken salad and a ham sandwich, and Flint opted for the bacon-and-cheese fries platter. When the girl walked away, Akimaru took the ninpo in both hands, ripping it swiftly in half. When the card halves fell to the table, a mist sprang up from their backs, obscuring the entirety of his body from the chest up.
“That’s cheating.”
“That’s life, Mr. Ananham. At least, for men like us, that’s life.” Akimaru’s voice came through the mist just fine, the same quiet, Fiefdom-heavy accent that Flint had come to know over the years. As their meals arrived, the conductor came over the intercom system to inform all of the passengers that they would be arriving in Ja-Wen in four and a half hours’ time, and he hoped they’d enjoyed their trip over the last few days on the 12 Line.
“So what do we know about this year’s host, Mr. Twitch,” Flint asked of the Ninja.
“Very little, surprisingly. There are no good leads of information, even from my personal contacts,” replied Akimaru.
“That’s no good. I’ve heard things about him, but it’s been mostly rumors.”
“When you have no solid information, sometimes rumors can serve as facts,” said Akimaru. “We would do well to keep a close eye on him and his Shades when the competition begins, Mr. Ananham.” Flint raised his coffee cup to the white-clad Ninja and tipped his head.
“I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Akimaru.” They touched drinks, and settled in to finish their food and head back to their respective groups. Ja-Wen lay only four hours away, and everybody should be ready to get off of the train and lay low as soon as possible. After all, the chances were good that the Ja-Wen station would be full of guards and law enforcement officers of some sort, much as the station in Desanadron had been. But none of the Hoods or Midnight Suns were known in Ja-Wen, and they wanted to keep things that way as long as they possibly could.
Wouldn’t do to be arrested on foreign soil, after all.
Cailee Parthridge, being a young woman of the Cuyotai people, sometimes just couldn’t stop herself from performing some sort of stunt or prank when the opportunity presented itself. As it turned out, however, shoving a firework into the back pocket of a police officer in Ja-Wen wasn’t as amusing as she might have thought. While the man’s yipping and yelping for help had thrown her into a fit of raucous laughter, the arrival of several assisting officers earned her a foot chase through at least seven city blocks.
The chase had been a thriller, she would recall later. Provided, of course, there was a later to be had. One blind turn out of an alley had landed her in the hands of several patrolmen who, though they had no idea what the strange werecoyote had done, assumed it had to be bad. Especially considering the fact that a handful of their fellow uniformed officers were giving chase.
So now she sat in a lockup cell, waiting for Helen, Amanda, or perhaps even Yvonne to come bail her out. The Sisters of Night hadn’t been in the city for more than a couple of hours, and one of their members had already gotten herself in hock with the rest of the group. Just wonderful, she thought, punching the pillow on the cell’s single cot. The dank, musty aroma coming from the cell’s toilet made her sensitive gut squirm. They’ll likely leave me here for an evening to learn a lesson.
But as she prepared herself for an evening of waiting until charges of criminal mischief could be filed, or perhaps assault of an officer, since the man’s buttocks had likely been charred by the sputtering firework, she heard the door at the end of the hall slide loudly open on its rusted metal track. A set of heavy boots clomped down the hall toward her cell. Cailee sat up on the cot, crossing her legs and her arms, waiting patiently. When at last a Lizardman officer garbed in an iron chain shirt and plate leggings stood before her cell door, she cocked her head to the side.
Without a word, the officer put a key in her cell door, turned it, and slid her cell door open. “Your fines have been paid, Ms. Parthridge. Be thankful you have some friends in this city,” grumbled the officer. Before Cailee could make a smartass reply, another man stepped into view through her cell bars. The gentleman wore the uniform of a butler, complete with dark hair slicked back over his head and a monocle resting over one brilliant green eye. The butler gave her a formal bow, tucking one arm across his belly before standing to full height.
“You paid my way out,” she asked the butler. She rose from the cot and stepped out of her cell. The guard strode away, presumably back to his duties, but not without taking one curious look back at the butler and the Cuyotai.
“Ah, not precisely. I came on behalf of my master, Ms. Parthridge,” said the butler. “And speaking of him, he would like to speak with you, young lady. It seems you have garnered his interest. There’s no obligation to see him, of course,” he said, lowering his voice. “But considering the fact that he paid your fines and ensured that this incident of yours did not go on any public record, you may want to thank him for his generosity in person,” the man said, giving her a smug little smile that she normally would tear off of his face with her claws.
Yet somehow, she didn’t think that a wise idea for the time being. For now, she thought, it’s best to just play along. “Well then, lead the way, Jeeves.”
“Actually, miss, my name is Wayne. If you would just follow me,” he said, leading Cailee Parthridge out of the precinct house and onto the streets of Ja-Wen.
Sally Ridge looked down on the city of Ja-Wen from the Koikara Group’s corporate housing suite living room window, taking in the activity below. So many stray thoughts, she thought to herself. It’s hard to keep them all out. Seventeen stories above street level, Sally stood poised at the floor length window in an emerald evening dress with a mink stole wrapped around her shoulders. The warmth the stole offered her pleased her, but the lack of information Norbert could provide most certainly did not.
“There just isn’t anything on the public or private records anywhere in this city on the hosting guild, ma’am. It’s as if they don’t exist,” Norbert said, tapping away on his data machine. “I’ve already gathered what information I can from the local office’s databases, but there’s bupkes.”
“That’s because you ain’t got your ears to the streets, man,” offered Lester Joelly. The Wererat lazed on the plush leather couch dominating the central floor space of the suite’s living room, his tie loosened over his white button shirt. “Mr. Turpin will come back with information, you can count on that.”
“And the 12 Line,” asked Sally, turning toward Norbert. He was seated at the desk in the corner directly to her right, tapping away furiously on his data machine to gather information from other data machines throughout the city. “Has it arrived yet?”
“It’s on course, due to arrive in two hours, Ms. Ridge,” he replied. “You want to ask me, this whole flaming thing is a bad idea, these Games. What if the law turns up and decides to start poking around in the Group’s business? This isn’t Desanadron, Ms. Ridge. We can’t hide behind trade secret laws here.”
“I don’t intend to hide at all, except for our participation in the Games, Mr. Channel,” she replied. Sally turned her attention back down to the streets below momentarily, then turned and began striding toward her private bedroom. “I need some time alone. Give me regular reports, Mr. Joelly,” she said over her shoulder. “And schedule some time for a meeting with Aldarman, Mr. Channel. I’d like to know exactly how our company is performing here in Ja-Wen.”
“Understood, Ms. Ridge,” he said, tapping away once again on his keyboard. The door to her room opened without Sally touching the knob, and she closed it behind her with another brief push of her mental powers. In darkness she sighed, the stole quickly removed and tossed aside like so much scrim. Here, in this room she had specifically designed for herself, she was free to let her mind wander and poke and prod as she liked. Here, like her private apartment back in Desanadron, and a dozen other apartments in a dozen other towns and cities, she could use her Psychic powers to their fullest.
Or she could dampen down all of the excess noise of outside thoughts and get some rest. For the time being, she chose the latter over the former, laying her head down on a goose-down filled pillow. The satin sheets tucked like a cocoon around her body, Sally Ridge settled in for the first peaceful sleep she’d had in weeks.
“I still don’t see why we couldn’t have boarded the 12 Line,” observed Kazuya. “We would have gotten to Ja-Wen without the need for constant rest stops.” The Lenak Petara had been lined up in the Ricco station to board the 12 Line train several days before when Koby Nellis, the Wererat Rogue going with Kazuya to the Games, came dashing up to the group. He warned them that not only would the Hoods and Midnight Suns be on board the 12 Line, but from what he’d heard from some of his ‘sources’, so too would be a number of bounty hunters out looking for the likes of the Lenak Petara.
“Hell and blast,” Watari Ichigo, the Human Fallen Knight had growled. “Sir, we should abort the train ride. Perhaps some other means of conveyance would be best.” And of course, like an idiot, Kazuya had trusted Koby’s ‘sources’. The group had ultimately booked travel with a group of Wayfarers, traveling east in their passenger wagon as they made their way to the marketplaces of Whistlie and Ja-Wen. Swift though they had been at first, when the tradesmen had stopped in Whistlie, Kazuya had decided they couldn’t be delayed any further.
So the group had commandeered the wagon and the horses, and now they rode north toward Ja-Wen, having to stop every few dozen miles or so to ensure that they had no pursuit coming from the south. During one such stop the day before, Koby had admitted that he hadn’t been told anything about bounty hunters. “I just don’t trust those trains, man. They’re mecha, and all mecha fails after a while.” So because of the young Wererat’s fear of technology, Kazuya and his group had been forced to break the law before even getting into the city of Ja-Wen for the Games.
But now the city was only perhaps five or six hours’ ride north of their position, and all would be forgiven so long as they got there without incident. With this thought in mind, Kazuya jerked hard on the reins to pull the horses to a halt as a pack of seven rendermen came leaping out of a copse of woods to one side of the main road. Man-like creatures made entirely of a malleable sort of metal skin, the rendermen stood among some of the most vicious monsters in the eastern regions of Tamalaria.
Dismounting from the driver’s box and drawing his katana, Kazuya loosed a heavy sigh. Jake Zero landed nimbly right behind him, drawing his rapier and stepping next to his boss. “Jake?”
“Yes, sir?”
“When we get to Ja-Wen,” he said, watching the gangly, angular creatures approach, listening to the raw hunger in their wordless growls. “Remind me to kick Koby in the dick for this.”
Paul Stockton stood on the platform with Robert, the Gnome and Khan looking like quite an odd coupling indeed. But they had talked it over with the others, and all five had agreed that the Games’ beginning hours would flow best if they at least met the heaviest of the competition outright and made nice with them. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, Paul thought.
When the 12 Line train pulled into the station slowly, its turbines slowing and charcoal gray smoke chuffing into the open air over the loading platform, Paul drew out a cigarette and lit it. “You know, those things’ll kill you,” Robert commented.
“I hardly think so, mate,” Paul replied. “Like as not I’ll die pinned under an autocart, ‘specially if we can’t get a new lift in the garage. And we’ll be able to afford one if we can place in these Games. Third prize is five-grand, Robert. Says so right in the invitation,” he said, passing the scroll up to the Khan. When the train came to a complete halt, the first of the passenger doors opened, and several civilians started pouring out in pairs and threes, pushing to make their way out of the comparatively cramped space of the train to the people-choked space of the loading platform. Out of the pan and into the fire.
“How are we going to recognize any of them,” Robert asked. “I mean, these kinds of people don’t exactly go out of their way to stick out in a crowd.”
“Maybe not where they’re from, but this isn’t their turf. They aren’t too well known around here. Besides, Brailor’s heard things about them. The easiest to spot should be William Deus.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, Brailor says that folks who’ve met him say he’s got a kind of woman’s walk,” said Paul, pitching away his spent cigarette after using it to light a second one. “Sort of a light voice, kind of femmy, if you catch me. He’s leader of the Hoods, so if we sees him, we sees all of ‘em eventually. As fer the Midnight Suns, well, do you see any other Black Draconus’ around, Robbie?” The Khan seemed to consider this for a moment, then shook his head. “See? Simple enough.”
But when Paul Stockton did manage to see William Deus and his Hoods coming off of the train, he could not escape also noticing the enormously muscled Jaft among the group. “Gaipo be praised, that man is as big as me,” breathed Robert behind him.
“I was just noticing the same thing,” Paul said. He watched from fifteen yards away as William Deus gathered the four other men around him in a sort of huddle. Just behind them, coming from the coach section of cars, he spotted the inky black, reptilian head of Thaddeus Fly as he disembarked the train with his Midnight Suns in tow. The sight of another muscle-bound man, an Orc with one mangled eye, made him shudder. The white-clad Ninja gave him a bigger fright, though, because anyone willing to be so blatant about what they were in broad daylight was probably a lot more headache than they were worth going against. “So, what do you figure our odds are, Robbie?”
“Slim, sir, very slim.”
“Alright, so we’re all understood on this one, yes,” Anna asked of the four men gathered in the huddle with her. “We all go to separate hotels, we gather only once a day outside of the Games as a group. Otherwise, no more than three of us together at one time.”
“Standard procedure, in other words,” said Flint. “Now remember, the Games will start with the opening ceremony tomorrow night down in the basement of Roy’s Toy Emporium. Everybody, break!” Like a football squad they all clapped their hands, took up their bags, and started walking off in five different directions. Anna started away toward the southwest when a Gnome and Khan stepped away from a support column holding the loading platform roof up, right in her path.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to move around them.
“William Deus?” She stopped dead in her movements, staring down at the Gnome, then up at the Khan. While most of the tiger-men were outright bastards, she could tell from the soft look in this one’s eyes and the air of calm around him that he might very well stand as an exception to the rule. Then again, she thought, some of the civilized ones are downright snobby. I hope he isn’t that, because these two are obviously competition.
“As it so happens, yes,” she said. She looked around conspiratorially. “And between you and me,” she said, leaning down and whispering, “I might like to keep that sort of thing quiet. I have warrants just about everywhere, friend. So for now, just call me Will.”
“Understandable, Will,” said Stockton. He walked alongside Deus as she slowed her pace, exiting the train station like a normal civilian, Robert Saffis following behind the two of them like a bodyguard. “I won’t take much of your time, sir, just enough to let you know that it’s an honor to meet you in the flesh.” He turned and extended a hand toward her, which she accepted amiably enough.
“And your real motives for this little meeting,” she inquired. This was the point at which Robert stepped forward, maintaining a presence of protection on the Gnome’s behalf.
“No hidden agendas here, sir,” Saffis said quietly. “To be quite honest, the Tacha Forus have never thought of ourselves as much of a guild, Will. We mostly only partake of certain, well, disreputable practices, in order to keep our machine shop afloat and profitable. We just want to keep things respectful, sir,” he finished. “Paul, we should get going,” he added, turning away and starting south down Fairway Road.
“That about sums it up,” said Paul. Anna watched Saffis merge with the crowd of shoppers in front of the various stores along the long road, noting that he didn’t attempt any kind of intimidation or pocket picking operations. If what the Khan said was true, then what exactly was their group doing competing in the Games? Only legitimate, full-time gangs and Guilds were supposed to participate. What was going on this time around to make things different, she wondered. “Hope he didn’t offend, Will.”
“No, it’s not a problem,” she replied. “We’ll be seeing you again tomorrow night,” she said, moving off down the road by herself. Paul Stockton did not follow, but kept his eyes on the man named William Deus as long as he could, quickly losing sight of him. He suspected that Deus wanted it that way, and he wasn’t about to try and keep up with a real professional. Turning toward Robert, he sauntered over to the Khan, who stayed queued in a line before a herb vendor’s cart.
“Well, sir?”
“He seemed an alright sort,” Paul said. “At least he didn’t try to rip my throat out.”
“Hence why we didn’t approach Thaddeus Fly,” Robert grumbled.
“That one has a reputation for not being friendly. I’d rather not take too many risks just yet, eh? So, what are we in line for?”
“Black pepper powder,” Robert informed him.
“What for?”
“Let’s just say, sir, that a good Soldier uses any means necessary to win the fight,” Robert supplied, turning away and falling silent in the line. Paul gave Robert a small envelope with instructions they’d already discussed previously, to be dispersed to the others in their representative group. Then he walked away, turning down a side street, off to collect his own information where he could.
He hoped for good news, but expected to hear the worst.
Victor Flant thumped his empty mug on the bar counter to let the Dwarf tending the tavern know he needed a refill. The stocky, heavily bearded man gave him a quizzical look for only a moment before deciding it might be best not to tell the man to be gentle with the glass. Buying another would cost him a few copper shillings. A hospital bill for a broken face would cost him a considerable deal more.
The Lizardman Thug put a tin coin on the counter for the drink, and mulled over the coming Games. He didn’t really want to be here in Ja-Wen, taking part of this sort of silliness. But Ms. Ridge had insisted, and he knew better than to argue with his employer. She kept him paid well, and saw to any legal problems that arose from his violent temper. That, over the course of his seven years with the Koikara Group, required a wealth not only of money and influence, but patience as well.
Flant was about to ask for yet another mug, having drained this one, when a light hand tapped him on the shoulder. Standing behind him was a man he recognized immediately, having seen him momentarily back in Blackwood. The butler-type fellow gave him a smug grin followed by a slight incline of the head. “Excuse me, but you are Mr. Victor Flant, yes?”
“What of it,” growled the Lizardman.
“My master would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience, Mr. Flant. I have been instructed to give you this,” he said, presenting a small beige envelope for the Thug. “Inside are the directions you will require to meet with him. The sooner you speak with him, the better, but do not open the envelope for at least another three hours, Mr. Flant.”
“And if I told you your master and yourself could go take a flying screw at the moon,” Flant asked belligerently. The few customers seated near to hand suddenly remembered appointments they’d made elsewhere in the city that afternoon, and began hastily making their way out of the tavern.
“Then that, of course, is your choice, Mr. Flant,” said the butler with a graceful bow from the waist. “But if you do get curious, wait at least three hours, good sir. Until next we meet, farewell.” And without another sound to mark his passage, the butler exited the building, leaving a gaping Victor Flant staring after him. He looked down at the envelope in his free hand, put another tin coin on the counter and darted outside. But when he looked up and down the busy dirt street, he saw no sign of the butler.
He’d wait one hour, he decided, and open the envelope.
Cailee stood in the doorway of a grand study, bookshelves lined with tomes and volumes of both fact and fiction from the floor to a height of at least fifteen feet. The shelving units appeared to have been built directly into the walls, and they covered almost every available inch of wall space except for a single window and the hearth and fireplace. A man sat with his back to her before a roaring fire, and she could just barely make out the scent of burning tobacco.
“Ms. Parthridge, I am pleased you’re here,” said the unseen man in the green high-backed chair. “Please, come in. Have a seat with me, the fire’s wonderfully cozy right now,” said the stranger who, she assumed, owned the house Wayne had led her to. “I would have Wayne offer you a drink, but I’m afraid he’s off running an errand for me at the time. But the bar’s right over there, under the window,” the man said.
Cailee skipped by the bar and instead carried herself to the red high-backed leather chair across from the man. When she seated herself, she found herself looking at a long-faced, pale Human with jet black hair. Despite the man’s paleness and lack of smile, she found herself thinking he was sort of handsome, in his way. He turned his eyes from the fire to her, and she found the reflection of the flames in the hearth glinting off of them, giving him an almost spectral aspect.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Twitch, Headmaster of the Shades of Ja-Wen. This is my humble home,” he said, moving his hands to his sides to indicate the whole of the house. “Ms. Parthridge, how long have you been a member of the Sisters of Night?” Cailee took a moment to consider his question. The Shades were the hosting Guild of this year’s Games, so it made sense that he knew who she was, who she worked with. Yet she had the suspicion that this man already knew more than the basic information.
“I don’t know. A while, I guess,” she said.
“Six years. That’s not just a while, not in the short term at least,” said Twitch, looking once again into the sparking, crackling fire. The sound of the flames seemed to die down, making way for his quiet words to reach her sensitive ears. “That’s a fully developed commitment when you’re talking about Guilds. Though, as a Cuyotai, you have a long time ahead of you to jump around here and there as you will.”
“Your point?”
“I’m getting to it, my dear, please, be patient.” A rap came from the study door, and Cailee turned her attention to Wayne, the butler, standing in the doorway. “Your task is complete?”
“Yes, master,” said the butler with a small bow. “When do you wish for me to move on to the next appointed task?”
“Tomorrow morning, eleven or so, Wayne. You may take the rest of the day off, if you’d like,” said Twitch. I don’t like this guy, Cailee thought. He sounds too, I don’t know, pompous. Like he’s in control of the world or something.
“Thank you ever so much, master,” replied Wayne, moving silently out of the doorway and out of sight.
“Ms. Parthridge, I’ve reviewed much of your work with the Sisters of Night,” said Twitch, regaining the Cuyotai’s attention. “I believe your talents have been, well, underappreciated with Ms. Vanik and Setine,” he said softly. “I think it would behoove you to think about a change of your routine and allegiance.”
“Really,” Cailee snorted. “We’re here for the Games, Mr. Twitch, not for some recruitment drive. I don’t know what you were thinking, bringing me here like this, but I thank you for bailing me out nonetheless,” she said. She rose from her seat and started for the door when Twitch stopped her short with a pair of questions.
“How many times have they made you sit in a cell, Ms. Parthridge? How many times have they insisted that you needed the time to ‘think about being more subtle’?” Cailee thought that one over, realizing that her fellow Sisters of Night had never once, in six years, come and bailed her out of trouble before she had suffered through a few nights’ worth of ‘lessons’. In Desanadron, she’d even spent a full week and a half in general population lockup at the city-state’s medium-security prison facility. She’d learned more in that time about cruelty than she could wish on any of her so-called comrades.
She turned around once more and returned to the red high-backed chair. “I’m listening,” she said flatly.
“Excellent. Then let us discuss your future.”
“It’s good to see you again, Jefe,” said Flint to one of his cousins as the six Wererats sat at a poker table in one of Ja-Wen’s larger gaming halls. “Even if you are taking my money shamelessly.”
“I’m not taking it, I’m winning it,” offered the burly Wererat leader of the Pack of Liars. The dealer, a Human with a cybernetic eye implant and steel plate dominating one half of his face, eyeballed the two rats seated at the left end of the table from him. “Besides, this bandejo ain’t exactly losing a lot of hands hisself, is he,” asked Jefe, tipping his snout toward the dealer.
“Difficult to lose too often with a good cheating system,” said Esmerelda Logan, the Ninja of the Pack. The dealer gave her a stern glare, but she just stared back at him with an expressionless face. “Don’t even try telling me that you don’t have a system set up. Every gaming hall worth its weight in salt employs a few dealers who can cheat better than the pros who come in.”
“Ma’am, if you insist on calling me a cheater, I’ll have to have security escort you out,” said the dealer quietly. “And besides which, I do not cheat.”
“Then what does that snazzy little gizmo in your eye socket do, precisely,” asked Seth Logan, seated directly across from the dealer. He’d been the first to notice the miniscule little marks on the backs of the cards in the dealer’s deck, each of which probably corresponded with the eye device in the Human’s head.
“It allows me to read heat signatures,” said the dealer. “A person can have a good poker face, but their body heat signs will always reveal if they have a good hand or not.”
“Ah, so it isn’t exactly cheating then, is it,” said Stephanie Claudis. Flint had been watching her play her hands conservatively, but not without any risk-taking at all. She fascinated him with her lightness of tone, her lack of any sort of regional accent, and the way she moved made him think of the way ballet dancers might move during a performance. “I see. May I take a closer look at it?”
Momentarily taken aback, the dealer allowed for Stephanie to move from her seat around the table, hovering only a few inches from his face. She stared at his red optic, twisting her head this way and that. While she had his full attention, Seth swapped out a few cards from his hand, replacing them with exactly the same cards from one of his spare decks. The difference, of course, was that his deck had no markings on it whatsoever.
Jefe’s plan seemed like it might work well enough, if they could distract the dealer a couple more times. Everybody else at the table, Flint included, had done the exact same thing as Seth had, but they needed the distraction a lot more than he did. Even with the mechanical eye watching his every move, Seth was adept enough at sleight-of-hand that he could replace his own hand with cards from his private deck at any time he wanted.
Stephanie smiled gently at the dealer and returned to her seat. “It really is remarkable what the Gnomes and the Dwarves have relearned from the Age of Mecha.”
“Don’t forget the Kobolds and the Humans, too,” said Flint. “They’ve made great strides this last ten years or so. Anyhow, I fold,” he said, which confused the dealer a good deal. That one, he thought, had been sitting on a full house! How could he fold on that, when the little one sitting right across from him only had a pair of aces and eights, a ‘Dead Man’s Hand’? He didn’t argue when he won the pot, though.
But a few hands later, as something seemed to be going awry with his marker system display, the dealer realized all too late as he lost twenty-thousand dollars of the gaming hall’s money to the little fellow of the group that he’d been had, and by all six of the rats.
Night descended upon the city of Ja-Wen like a black blanket, and Thaddeus Fly finally moved out into the streets from his hotel room in comfort. He hadn’t realized before debarking from the train just how much he stood out in the city. He hadn’t spotted a single other Draconus from the window of his rented room all day. He might well be the only dragon-man in the whole of the city.
His anonymity was shot.
Or at least, it was shot in the daylight. In the night, with a traditional mask on over his head, he could reasonably pass for a muscular Lizardman, of whom the city had plenty. As had the Hoods, his group had split up around the city, though Rage kept himself relatively close at hand to Akimaru. The Orc Berserker had always taken a liking to the white-clad Ninja and Lain McNealy, both of whom had actually managed to make the brute sociable and learn how to read. That, of course, had all been back before the ruins in the northwestern mountains.
But even with the strange accident that seemingly had unlocked the Orc’s mental potential, he still clung to Akimaru and Lain, for which Fly was grateful. He would have hated to have the Greenskin decide that the Midnight Suns were no longer for his tastes. Unlike Deus, his own Guild didn’t have too much in the way of raw muscle around. Rage could counter a good amount of that muscle, like Calvin Licht for example. By Fly’s estimation, the Jaft Thug was little more than a poor substitute for Stockholm, whose brute strength and power of intimidation could leave even the bravest soul trembling.
“Including my own,” he whispered aloud to the night. Fly leaped to the roof of the hotel, two straight stories up, clinging to the edge and pulling himself up and over with ease. Using the rooftops, he ran and leaped his way clear across the city’s eighteenth district east, toward the twenty-second. Upon the roof of a tannery, he met the familiar female figure of Clarissa Weeks, one of his Midnight Suns. “Clarissa.”
“Headmaster,” she replied.
“So, what’s the word on the street about our host this year?”
“There hardly seems to be any,” Clarissa said with a sigh. She looked out over the city below them. “And the few folks I could get to talk to me wouldn’t say much other than to avoid the guy as much as possible. And I guess one of the judges used to be a member of the Shades himself, back before the new shift in management.”
“Hmm. Not good.” He rubbed his chin beneath the thin, gauzy material of his mask, folding his arms over his chest. “It seems odd to me as well that the only returning groups from the last Games are us, the Hoods, and the Shades. I’ve never even heard of any of the other Guilds on the list.”
“Well, on that score, at least, I was able to find out some stuff,” Clarissa said. “You know the Koikara Group? Well, it’s like you suspected, headmaster. It’s a group led by the company’s CEO, Sally Ridge,” she said. Weeks pulled a folder out of her backpack, and handed it over to Fly. He opened it, quickly rifled through some of the papers, and then stuffed it away in his own bag. “I got info in there about a couple of the other groups, too, the Lenak Petara and the Pack of Liars. You’re gonna love that one,” she said, shaking her head.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because four of the five members of the Pack are cousins of Flint Ananham, Deus’s number one rat,” Weeks said. Fly felt the stirrings of a headache coming on as she laughed about that tidbit.
“Just wonderful. The question is, are they as good as Flint?”
“Oh, goodness no,” Clarissa said, waving her hands to assure her headmaster. “Never in life, sir. His cousins have all been locked up at some point or another, fingered for something and sentenced. The big surprise there is his cousin Jefe, who actually served the full of his term when he was arrested and convicted of armed robbery. Served ten years in Palen City-State Correctional,” she said.
“Ten years? I thought the penalty in Palen for that was five to eight.”
“Apparently he crippled a guy during the job,” said Weeks. “Didn’t even fight the case. Pled guilty, did his stint, and walked away a free man after his term. I’ve got a few friends I can talk to at the prison via messenger bird, maybe try to learn more about his stay in lockup.”
“Don’t bother,” said Fly. He took out a pair of small binoculars, peering this way and that over the rooftops. He thought he’d seen something, some other rooftop movement, but as he looked about, he couldn’t find anything. Not yet, anyway. “Good work, Clarissa. Take the rest of the night for yourself, but don’t get into too much trouble.”
“That should be easy enough. I’ll head to the bars, and the first cute guy I can land, I’m taking back to my hotel. Hey, what about you?” As Fly spotted the other movement again and locked his binoculars on it, he grinned, stuffing the tool away.
“Me? I’ve got work to do before the Games get under way.” Without further explanation, Fly leaped from the rooftop, leaving no trace of his having been present except a small scrape of his clawed feet in the roofing tiles.
Kenneth O’Toole and Mr. Brady sat in the Zipping Whiggum tavern, sipping their beers disinterestedly in the corner of the main barroom. Things could have been worse, Kenneth thought. As a Cuyotai Q Mage, he had plenty of ways of playing pranks on the unsuspecting strangers seated all around the tavern, but as a member of the Tacha Forus, he had to keep his boss’s reputation, and that of the shop, intact. Resisting the urge had been difficult, however, and he’d finally decided to get in touch with Brady for drinks. Perhaps a little alcohol would dull his urge to play around.
As for Mr. Brady, well, he was always willing to have a few rounds with a coworker or friend. Let the others think what they would, he usually found Ken’s pranks to be hilarious fun, but he knew that they had to keep a very low profile while participating in the Games. It wouldn’t do to have an arrest that could spell the end of the shop’s good name.
“This city isn’t going to be the same by the time these Games are over with,” Kenneth observed quietly. “I mean, eight groups of highly reputed thieves, with perhaps the exception of ourselves, all roaming around a single city like this? It’s going to play hell with the law enforcement working the streets.”
“I wouldn’t worry overly much about them,” Brady replied. “With any luck, our host or the judges have already laid the right bribes in the right places to make everything move smoothly.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” said Brady. He sipped his beer, shifting himself in his seat so his long duster fell more naturally over his arms. “These things tend to run like clockwork. No point in getting worried about it now.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Hey, what time did Paul want us back at the hotel?”
“He said to just be back by morning, nothing more specific,” said Brady. “Why?”
“Just wondering if I had time to head on over to the red light district,” said the Cuyotai. He drained his mug, clapped Brady on the shoulder, and bade him a good evening. As he exited the tavern, Brady took himself to the restroom, locking the door behind him. He shut off the overhead light by flicking a single switch, and the only light spilling through the room now came from his eyes, a sickly yellow illumination. A serpent-like shadow slithered down from the ceiling, and in the mirror of the sink, its eyes shimmered a dark blue.
“Keep an eye on him, but let him do as he will. We need him for the Games,” he said to the serpent. The creature of shadows hissed and slithered out of a window in the far wall. Brady flicked the light back on, flushed the toilet, and headed back into the tavern. Nobody appeared to have overheard him, and even if they did, they didn’t suspect a thing.
Jake Zero stood atop the Unified Church of Lenos in the sixteenth district of Ja-Wen, smiling down at the foreign city. Not that it was too foreign, really. He’d been to Ja-Wen before, several times in fact. That should not have surprised anybody in the Lenak Petara. After all, when you joined, nobody was too eager to ask you about your past.
“Certainly a nice view, isn’t it,” asked an unfamiliar voice behind him. In the blink of an eye, Jake had spun and crouched onto one knee, his rapier drawn and pointed at the black-clad figure three yards away. The tall Ninja held a set of shuriken in each clawed hand, ready to throw in a heartbeat. “And whom might you be, sir?”
“When asking someone’s name, it is only polite and proper to give one’s own name first,” Jake replied, largely out of instinct. Having been born and raised in the Fiefdom of Lemago, he still clung to many of the ways of its peoples. The figure, his face hidden by a black cloth mask, chuckled low in his throat and tucked the shuriken away, standing straight.
“My name is Thaddeus Fly, and it is good to see the old ways still remain in the cities and townships of my homeland,” said the Headmaster of the Midnight Suns. “And now your name?” Zero sheathed his rapier and stood to full height, his right hand still gripping the handle of his weapon.
“I am Jake Zero, of the Lenak Petara. I have heard of you and your Midnight Suns, Thaddeus Fly. I am honored to finally meet you in person, though I must say, you are much taller and broader than I had thought you would be.”
“Really? Well, I don’t often get that sort of reaction. Usually when someone recognized me, they either make a hasty exit or say something along the lines of ‘stop, in the name of the law!’ You know, that sort of thing.”
“I’m familiar with it, yes.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Jake Zero, but you hardly seem the sort to be jumping around rooftops. You’re wearing plate armor, to start with,” he said, looking at the heavy plates of metal Zero wore for protection. “Secondly, you’re not exactly wearing dark colors. So how, exactly, did you get on the roofs, and how are you remaining unseen?”
“I have a knack for climbing,” said Zero. “You know, what with the extra arms,” he said, flexing his second set of hands. “And besides, it’s easy enough to go unseen when you’re on the roofs. As for how I keep from being detected inside the buildings, well, that’s thanks much to the potion I drank earlier. It makes me light as a feather, when I concentrate on it.” Jake pulled a small flask from his belt and waggled it back and forth. “Expensive stuff, unless you know how to get a good discount.”
“And how do you manage that, not appearing to be a thief of any sort,” asked Fly.
“I have my ways, Mr. Fly,” said the Sidalis. “I have my ways. Might I ask what you’re doing out, hopping from roof to roof?”
“What a Ninja does, Mr. Zero. I am observing my operational grounds, specifically, for the Games.” He looked out over the side of the church. Down the street, near a lamp pole, he could see a number of college-aged Humans lingering near an obvious prostitute. The hooker, an Illeck woman, appeared to be negotiating with the young men. Drawing his binoculars, Fly read the woman’s lips as she haggled over the price for a ‘group package’. He shuddered inwardly, and put the spectacles away. “I assume that we shall see one another again tomorrow night, at the opening ceremonies.”
“Indeed we shall, Mr. Fly.” But when Jake turned to bid Fly farewell, the Black Draconus Ninja was already gone.
As noon rolled around the following day, Ridley Poe, Taskmaster of the Shades, reviewed the notes left under his door the previous evening by his master, Mr. Twitch. An Illeck Rogue and Aeromancer, Poe might normally be assumed to a dark, fallow man with an obsession with power. While the latter fit him well enough, the former did not. Pale and soft-skinned, he had a head of silver hair that, when added to his slender figure and movements, made him appear overtly androgynous to most civilians he met with on a day-to-day basis.
Poe’s job within the Shades, essentially, was to dole out duties to the guild’s lower agents as he saw fit, or as Mr. Twitch required. Living in the west wing of Mr. Twitch’s manor in his own private suite of rooms, Poe sat at his fine oak desk, reviewing the information that had been given over to him thus far.
As planned, the note informed him, Cailee Parthridge had agreed to work in secret with the Shades, at least until the Games were over. Then, she would join their ranks fully, having no further need to associate herself with the Sisters of Night. Victor Flant, however, had turned out to be a different sort of story, though not too far off. Flant had opened his envelope prematurely, revealing a blank sheet of parchment. Suspecting he’d been taken for a sap, he’d simply thrown the parchment away in a public trash receptacle.
After setting fire to the receptacle in secret, Wayne Traedo, the headmaster’s personal servant, had delivered a second notice, secreting it into Flant’s back pocket when the Lizardman Thug finally stumbled back toward the corporate housing building he was staying at with his group. With luck, he would find the note today, and follow the instructions on it. If he did, he would be arriving at any given time at the manor, and Poe was to deal with the Thug directly.
Poe wondered if he could hope to avoid such a vile fellow. He hoped so not out of any sort of fear, but out of disgust. The information file sitting open on his desk revealed Victor Flant to be a callous, classless Thug of the lowliest variety, preferring to waste his time and assets on gambling, prostitutes, and the purchase and use of narcotics.
“Scum,” he mumbled. Still, if it was his master’s wish that he interact with the man and try to bring him around to working for the Shades, he would endeavor to do so. Standing from his desk, Poe smoothed the single crease in his velvet doublet before heading into the kitchenette of his suite, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He returned to his desk with the mug in hand, closing the file and setting it aside to look at the day’s routine paperwork.
While most of the Shades’ operatives were only just waking up within the next couple of hours, he would not likely get to sleep for a couple of days yet. The workload of a second-in-command, he mused, was always at least twice that of the person in charge. He wondered, momentarily, when his chance would come.
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