David Dalglish - A Dance of Ghosts

Sef started to ask, realized what it meant, and then shook his head.

“Day keeps getting worse,” he muttered.

It took twenty minutes to cut through the weaving rows of homes gathered in the far south of the city, always heading east toward the wall. The farther east they went, the more spacious the homes grew, less crowded together. By the time they hit the wealthiest corner, many were surrounded by tall fences, with a few even sporting a bored mercenary or two keeping watch at the entrance. And then, in the midst of all the grand buildings and obvious wealth, like a mocking reminder to the fate of such owners, was a cemetery. Victor was certain that was the reason Deathmask had chosen to flee there in the first place.

“Wait here,” Victor told Sef. The man was never pleased with the order, but every time they’d come, outside he remained, as per Deathmask’s orders. Past the opened gate surrounding the cemetery, there were many crypts, each marked by the name of its wealthy family. Some still existed, such as the Gemcrofts, whereas others like the Blackbards and the Garlands were long dead and gone, falling to poverty or extinction. It was to the Gemcroft one he went, and as he climbed down the cold stone steps, Victor couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony. Just as he went to Lady Gemcroft’s mansion for money for his mercenaries and prestige to validate his actions, now he went to her family’s long-forgotten burial tomb for aid of a far darker sort.

The only light within came from the open entrance, and at its farthest edge, leaning with her back against one of the coffins placed in gaps carved into the stone walls, sat Veliana.

“Well, this is unexpected,” said Veliana, amusement twinkling in her right eye. The other was a bloodied red; seeing it made Victor uneasy. If there was anything that made him squeamish, it was having things near his eyes or watching something done to other people’s eyes.

“I find that hard to believe,” Victor said. “Usually, your group knows of what happens in Veldaren sooner than I do.”

“Perhaps,” Veliana said. She hopped down from her perch, smoothed out her pants. “But I fear today I am alone in here. Did I miss something fun up top? New developments, clever schemes?”

She stepped closer, pulling her dark gray cloak tighter about her body and smirking up at him.

“Of course not,” she said. “It is the Sun Guild, always the Sun, every street, every corner, every plot and lie.”

“You sound displeased by this,” Victor said.

“And why wouldn’t we be?” asked someone from the entrance, his shadow falling over them as its caster blocked the sunlight. Victor turned, felt the corner of his mouth tug.

“I heard how you have always thrived in chaos,” Victor told Deathmask as the guildmaster entered the crypt. “Then what greater chaos is this?”

“This isn’t chaos,” Deathmask said, shaking his head. “It’s a slow, steady conquest. Muzien is the opposite of chaos, Victor, and more like an unstoppable force. By the Abyss, if there’s going to be any way we can stop him, it’ll be through pure, unchecked chaos.”

“A bit simple,” Victor said, “but I’m not here to argue. Muzien surrounded me with his men today, and he’s threatened my death if I do not leave. During his little bit of bravado, he claimed the underworld was his. I’ve come to see if that really is the case.”

Deathmask walked right past Victor, stopped to kiss Veliana on the cheek, and then stepped into the darkness of the crypt. As he walked, torches hooked to the top of the hall at either side burst to life, burning purple flame that gave off no smoke. At Veliana’s beckon, Victor followed. They passed by row after row of the dead, finely crafted stone mimicries of their human bodies sealing in their dusty bones. At last, they reached the end, and upon a great stone wall that marked the crypt’s limits was a map of the city stretching from corner to corner, easily twice Victor’s size. The detail was impressive, crisscrossing streets, labeled shops, brothels, taverns, even marks to show where prostitutes gathered together when not employed by the brothels. Most important, though, were the colored lines made out of string that portrayed the limits of the various thief guilds.

Lying on the floor were piles of thread, green and red and black and blue. On the map, there were only three colors: a dark gray, a white, and a yellow. The gray and white shared but a small stretch, whereas encircling nearly the entire city from wall to wall were line after line of yellow.

“It’s down to just the two of us left to fight,” Deathmask said, snapping his fingers so that another torch sprang to life directly above them, giving them more light to view the map. “Cynric’s Wolf Guild is holding out best they can, but I’m fairly certain he’s received his final ultimatum from the Sun Guild.”

“Will Cynric cave in to Muzien’s demands?” Victor asked.

Deathmask shook his head.

“Cynric’s too much of a warrior. Plenty of his guild will turn on him, but that’s to be expected. His core group of men will stay. They all remember the glory days at the start of the thief war, and I daresay Cynric was quite fond of it, too. The other guilds may have built their little empires trading women and wine, but killing has always been what Cynric excelled at best.”

Victor crossed his arms, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer size of the map. So much yellow thread …

“Does he have a chance?” he asked.

Veliana laughed at his question.

“If he did,” she asked, “don’t you think we’d be out there with him? No, he has no chance. He’s excellent at hunting down prey, and he’ll hurt Muzien before he’s done, but this is something beyond his skill and understanding.”

“It might even be beyond ours,” Deathmask said, shaking his head. “I thought crushing Grayson’s advance would have stalled the Sun Guild, at least make them rethink things. Instead, it seems to have only made them more careful.”

“We need to act soon,” Victor said. “Find out where Muzien is, where he sleeps, where he eats. I know you can discover this, and when he’s alone, we can surround him with my soldiers and bring him down. We crushed Grayson, we crushed Thren Felhorn, and we can handle Muzien. Even if we can’t kill him, we just have to make it not worth the risk, neither the men we kill nor the coin we take.”

Deathmask chuckled, quiet at first, then louder as it seemed a bit of insanity leaked into his mismatched red and brown eyes. Reaching out, he grabbed the thread signifying the Wolf Guild and yanked it to the ground, followed by the dark gray of his own.

“You don’t get it, Victor,” he said. “The Darkhand trained Grayson. He trained Thren. At the Council of Mages, we were well aware of those two bastards long before they ever stepped foot into Veldaren to make their mark on the city. They were Muzien’s chosen heirs, just in case someone ever managed to sneak a lucky knife into the elf’s back. They were to conquer Veldaren, to make it an extension of Muzien’s empire in the west. And for a long while they looked to succeed, the Spider Guild a perfect mirror image of the Sun Guild … but then everything collapsed. Nothing Thren built seemed to endure. The guilds continued to war, the Trifect scored its victories, and then the Watcher reared his pretty little head.”

“What are you saying?” Victor asked.

Deathmask turned, jammed a finger against Victor’s breastplate.

“What I’m saying is that Muzien’s come to succeed where his heirs failed. Loss of coin means nothing. Death of his men means nothing. When I said he came here to conquer, I wasn’t being snide or melodramatic, because that is exactly what is happening. This is a war, and we fight against one of the greatest minds to ever take up the blade. Muzien might have one day ruled over the Dezren elves as their king, but he was banished for being viewed as too extreme by even those pointy-eared pricks. Muzien sees Veldaren as a foreign city to be conquered in war. The loyalty he inspires in his guild, the careful distribution of power, the aura of fear that accompanies his name, it all puts the guilds here to shame. Only Thren has ever come close, and now he’s dead or missing. The priests of Karak hold the king and queen of Mordan in their pockets, and even they have been forced to broker deals with Muzien lest they be destroyed. We have no hope here, Victor, not even the tiniest shred.”