Night guild 3, p.20
Night Guild 3, page 20
Ronan matched the fellow’s conspiratorial smile. “Then we’ll get on just fine. Your name?”
“Captain Kell, sir,” the captain said. “And you? Or perhaps…”
“It would be best for us to remain nameless, Captain.”
“Not a problem, sir. Come aboard?”
They went onto the ship and found it trim and well-kept, with a crew of stolid Ghennetian men who ignored Ronan and his friends with a studied indifference that made Ronan think that Captain Kell had not been exaggerating when he said his ship was well-suited to discretion. This ship would suit Ronan right down to the ground. He wondered again how it was that the King of Ghennet kept such vessels on standby. What other discrete tools, Ronan wondered, did the king have abroad in the lands? He clearly had learned much during his early training at the Night Guild.
“Where to, then, sir?” the captain asked, once they were all aboard.
“Trentum City,” Ronan replied. “The Outlander Dock of the Twelve Isles. And I’ll learn any news you can give me about the city as we sail.”
“Certainly, sir,” Captain Kell said. “The tide is rising, so we should be able to get off at once.”
The captain called out to his first mate, who proceeded to quickly and efficiently get the crew in motion. The sailors ran up the rigging to unfurl the sails, the mate took the wheel, and the sleek ship knifed out into the bay with the grace and speed of a diving gull.
“You’re looking for news from the Twelve Isles, then, sir?” the captain said, once they were underway.
“Please,” Ronan said. “I’ve been away for a long time, and I have a sensitive mission from the king to undertake there.”
Captain Kell took a moment to put his thoughts in order before speaking. “The biggest news out of Trentum has been about the rebellion,” he began. “You’ve heard of the Night Guild? They are very secretive, of course, but everyone knows they are the best assassins in Lithia. Anyway, the High Guild Council has imprisoned their leader, Guildmaster Tarquin. They accuse him of treason — and a bunch of other high-ranking members of the guild, too. But that’s not all. Other folks have also been accused of treason. There’s the chief of the Bank of Gold, Flavio Murillo, who’s also been arrested. Then there’s Janus, the leader of the rebellion.”
Janus, Ronan thought, very pleased to hear the name of his old mentor and friend. Guildsman Janus had been his main teacher, the man who had been in charge of Ronan’s training, and in charge of training Eric and Diana, too.
“Ah,” Ronan said, “tell me more about him.”
“There’s little enough to tell,” Captain Kell said. “He’s a mysterious figure, but it’s said that he was a friend of Tarquin and a traitor also. He’s most badly wanted by the High Guild Council of the Twelve Isles, but they’ve not caught him. And then,” Captain Kell added darkly, “there are the parthayeen.”
“What are they?” Ronan asked. “I’ve never heard the word before.”
“Few enough people in the isles have, sir, for they are a people from far away. They come from out east, a mercenary company from the lands near Galyan. The parthayeen are good soldiers, highly trained, and for hire to the highest bidder.”
“Wait,” Ronan said, “you’re telling me a mercenary company is operating in the Twelve Isles?”
“I’m afraid so, sir.”
“It’s hard to believe,” Ronan said. “The Twelve Isles have always produced high-level fighters of their own through the fighter guilds. They value the independence of their fighting forces. People from Trentum are proud that there is no need to import fighters from elsewhere.”
“I know it,” the captain said. “I was raised in the seafaring guilds of Trentum myself, so I understand how much it hurts the pride of the islanders to see hired soldiers in the streets.”
“But who has hired them, then?”
“First it was the Bank of Gold. There was a robbery there, some time ago now, and the bank thought they would impress their foreign clients more if they got help in from outside. But now it’s the High Guild Council that has hired them, ostensibly to keep the peace, but actually, they are being used as hired thugs to search for fugitives.”
“And the Fighter Guilds?”
“They are not quite in open rebellion, but they’ve called in their ancient right to refuse service. They say that the High Guild Council is acting contrary to the best interests of the islands, and they have joined together in refusing to be hired by the Guild Council for the foreseeable future.”
So, there was a rebellion in the Twelve Isles. The Fighter Guilds, Janus, and others, too, by the sound of it, were resisting the High Guild Council’s efforts to crack down on the Night Guild.
“These parthayeen mercenaries you mentioned,” Ronan asked. “They are searching the city? Checking the people who come in on the docks?”
“Yes…” Captain Kell said slowly, looking at Ronan thoughtfully.
“Then,” Ronan said, “I think that perhaps the Outlander Dock is not the best place to drop off after all.”
The captain smiled. “I completely understand,” he said smoothly. “I think I have just the place.”
Darkness was thick over the water, the lights of Trentum glowing brightly a little distance away. It was night, and Ronan and his friends were clambering into a little row boat that was about to be lowered from Ghennet’s Grace into the water.
Instead of landing at the Outlander Dock, Captain Kell had kept the ship well away from the Twelve Isles coast all that day. They had spent the day sailing the waters around the archipelago until, as darkness fell, they’d dropped anchor a quarter-mile from a nondescript region of the north-western end of Uon Island, the biggest island in the Twelve Isles.
“Remember,” Captain Kell said as they were about to leave, “I’ll be berthed at the Outlander Dock, waiting for you. If you can’t get to me, send me a message, and I’ll meet you here instead.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Ronan said.
The captain shook his head. “Just doing my job, sir.”
He may have been just doing his job, Ronan reflected, but without his help, things would have been a lot more difficult. Ronan and his friends may have been able to get information about the goings-on in the city if they had come here without the help of the king and his discreet captain, but they would have got nowhere near as complete information as they now had. It was just possible that they might have blundered straight into the Outlander Dock and been immediately accosted by these parthayeen.
It was unlikely that the mercenaries would not have identified them as Night Guild, and the most likely outcome was that Ronan and his friends would have just ended up sharing dungeon space with Guildmaster Tarquin before much time had passed.
As it was, they now had the opportunity to enter the city under the cover of darkness, taking their first steps with the continued advantage of anonymity.
They rowed the boat as silently as they could toward the gap in the city lights.
“Which canal is that?” Eric asked, frowning and peering into the darkness. “I can’t make it out.”
“It’s the canal between Uon and Calvaria,” Ronan replied. “In other words, exactly the one we want.”
Despite the name, the Twelve Isles was actually an archipelago made up of well over fifty individual landmasses. Of these, only twelve were of any significant size. Most of the others were little more than rocky outcrops, home only to colonies of seabirds. The twelve large islands, on the other hand, were densely inhabited, all of them covered with the thick urban sprawl of Trentum City.
These twelve large islands were almost indistinguishable from one another after many generations of building and development. The channels of seawater that ran between them had, over the years, been turned into deep tidal canals, crossed by wooden bridges and stone walkways. The tamed seawater in the canals was deep, but the channels were so narrow that moving from island to island really felt like stepping over small rivers.
The names of the islands had become synonymous with the names of the districts of the city. Uon was the biggest of the twelve islands by a wide margin, and it was home to most of the city’s industrial and commercial activity. Of the other eleven, the biggest were Calvaria, Drem, and Pria. These, and the other smaller islands, were mainly dominated by residential accommodation, small local markets, temple districts, and the administrative headquarters of the more obscure sorts of guild. The high-ranking and famous guilds nearly all had their headquarters on Uon — and as near to the docks as possible.
Calvaria was home to the Night Guild. In a discreet building buried in the heart of a quiet residential district, the sprawling campus of the guild hid in plain sight. In the center of the guild campus stood the monolithic temple of the Night God, and clustered around the temple were the strange, ramshackle buildings that hosted the Guild of the Dead — that mysterious organization whose job it was to see to the souls of departed people as they wandered the world, looking for a way through into the next realm.
The Night God was the patron of the Night Guild and the patron of the Guild of the Dead, and the two organizations worked closely together at times in the shade of their mysterious deity’s high temple.
The little boat carrying the adventurers entered the canal smoothly and quietly. The hour was very late, and there was no sound of any activity anywhere in this part of the city. Farther into Uon, there was a district of bars and restaurants and other premises catering to perhaps less respectable pleasures. There, Ronan knew, there would be revelry still ongoing, but here in the residential area, all was very quiet.
“We’ll take the boat as far along the canal as we can go,” Ronan whispered. “I know a place where we can get up on dry land without having to pass any of the bridges. They will almost certainly be watched by guards.”
Sure enough, as they maneuvered the little boat carefully, deep in the shadows underneath the wooden bridges that crossed the canal, they saw lights in the watchtowers whose job it was to keep an eye on the bridges.
Normally, these would be staffed by guards hired from the fighter guilds by the High Guild Council. Now, Ronan suspected, they were staffed exclusively by the outlander parthayeen mercenaries.
Past the bridges, in a place where the canal widened a bit, they found, on the Calvaria side, a narrow metal ladder that gave access from the water up to the ground level. Here, also, there was a conveniently placed nook in the wall, just large enough for them to slip their rowing boat in.
“The boat will almost certainly be covered when the tide comes up, but it won’t float away,” Ronan said. “If we need it again, we will be able to come back here and get it.”
The five companions moved stealthily from the canal into the city. All was very silent in the shadowy streets. They were in a district that might have been quite active during the day, but now, it was as desolate and silent as a graveyard.
“Our first step must be to take a look at the Night Guild,” Eric said. “If we can get up to the outer wall, we’ll at least know how much our loss of the Night God’s Magic will hinder us.”
“You mean, we will know whether we need that magic to be able to enter the guild at all?”
“Exactly,” Eric said. “If we can’t get in, we’ll need to take a different tactic. If we can, then we’ll be able to consider some straightforward assassinations as a start to the solving of this problem.”
Eric sounded fierce. Ronan shook his head. “I understand you, Eric,” he said, “and I feel as angry about the betrayal as you do, but that’s not the approach for us to take. Guildsman killing Guildsman in the streets of Trentum, in the guild house of the Night Guild… I want to avoid that as much as possible. These people may be traitors — they are traitors — but it’s not for us to just go and kill them. We need to try to bring them formally to justice, in the tradition of the city.”
“I agree with Ronan,” Diana said. “We’ve been operating solo for so long that we’ve become a law unto ourselves, but we can’t resolve this just by killing the traitors anonymously. We need to unravel what’s going on here, isolate the cause of the problems, and get the majority of the islands on our side.”
“Very well,” Eric grumbled. “You’re right, of course, but this betrayal makes me burn for vengeance.”
“Me too, old friend,” Ronan said. “And I don’t doubt we’ll get there. But we must take care and make sure we do it right.”
Their attempts to find and use the hidden entrances to the Night Guild were quickly frustrated. Their first stop was a drinking den called The Bridge to Uon, situated near the bridge that crossed the canal between Uon and Calvaria. In the back of this pub, there was a blank wall that — through magic they had never been explicitly taught — held a concealed magical entrance into the Night Guild campus. Those who had the shadow magic of the Night God and could activate the entrance would find themselves transported by magic to the guild house.
But the wall was gone.
A pile of rubble was all that remained of it, and a few new sheds of raw timber had been put up in its place. Timber still lay about the place, and some tools were leaning against a pile of bricks.
“First check,” Diana said grimly.
“Is there not a physical place you can go to? A regular gate?” Tanya asked.
“Not that we were ever shown. But as the king pointed out, we were still quite early in our training for being sent out on such a mission as this. In fact, our training was far from complete, as was our initiation into Night Guild secrets.”
Emelia, who had been quiet for most of their journey so far, spoke up. “In my time, there was no straight entrance to the Night Guild. There is the outer wall, of course, and those who have the magic can pass through that, but outlanders who wanted to see someone in the guild would meet them outside the wall and be physically brought through one of the portal entrances by a Night Guild initiate.”
“I, too, know the outer wall,” Ronan said. “I suspect it may be closely guarded, probably by these parthayeen soldiers, but I think we need to have a quick look if we can.”
The others agreed, and they stole silently through the darkened streets until they reached the brick wall that surrounded the Night Guild campus. They were, in fact, at a spot not far from the place where Guildmaster Tarquin had first shown Ronan through all those years ago when Ronan was just a youth, still all unknowing of where his path in the guild would take him.
It was still full night, but they were all keenly aware that they only had a few more hours of darkness to use before dawn arrived. Day would bring new opportunities; Ronan planned to send his group on separate missions to investigate different elements of the city and find out what was going on in more detail, but before that, he wanted to use the darkness to the full while he could.
“Here we are,” he said as they reached the outer wall. He pushed his hand against the cold bricks and looked up. The wall was about twelve feet high. It was too high to leap in one go, but not too high to climb.
“Give me a push,” he said to Eric, and the blond man immediately crouched, linking his palms together to help Ronan climb.
Ronan’s hands reached the top of the wall, and he pulled himself up. He looked over… into deep water.
“What in the…?” he muttered. Looking out, where he expected to see the guild buildings, the towers and quadrangles, the outhouses, and the courtyards, there was nothing. Nothing but the sea, stretching off into the darkness.
Ronan pulled his head back, looking around. They were nowhere near the sea wall. From this side, the Night Guild outer wall curved away sedately from where he stood, and when he dropped back to the ground and looked up, he saw a suggestion of towers rising up behind the wall, just as one would expect.
But when he again pulled himself up and looked over, black water stretched away into nothingness.
“There’s some kind of magic in play there,” he said to his friends. “When I look over the wall, I see the sea stretching away forever. When I look from the ground, I see the roofs and towers of the guild.”
“It’s like our clothes,” Eric said abruptly.
“What?” Ronan said, not understanding his friend.
“I mean,” Eric explained, “it’s the same as how our clothes have not lost their powers. They still keep us extra warm in the cold and cool in the heat. The Night Guild wall also has not lost its power. You’re seeing the defensive spell that stops anyone outside from just climbing over the wall into the guild. The wall acts as a portal to the sea. If you were to jump into the water, you’d turn round and find yourself out by the fisher’s dock.”
Ronan looked at him, amazed. “How on earth do you know that?”
Eric looked a little embarrassed. “Ah, well, when I was quite new to the guild, I tested it by climbing the wall and jumping. It was an unpleasant experience. There’s a sickening lurch when you jump from the wall and are transported. It’s like you’ve been thrown several miles at a very high speed. Not pleasant.”
“Why did you do that?” Diana asked him, smiling.
Eric shrugged. “I just wanted to try it, I guess. I was quite young. Janus caught me, though. The barrier sends a message to the senior guildsmen when it does its trick, so anyone who tried to sneak into the guild by jumping the wall can be caught.”
While Eric had been speaking, Ronan had been trying his best to summon shadow that might allow him to slip through the wall into the guild but to no avail. The shadows were silent, and no matter what he tried, he could not summon his Night Guild magic to aid him. The pools of shadow, which once would have been a source of power and strength for him, were nothing more than regular shadow.
“Someone’s coming,” Diana hissed.
All five of them immediately hurried silently across the empty square where they’d been standing. Ronan pointed to the roof of a single-story building at one side of the square. He may not have his Night Guild magic, but he still had his physical training. With one smooth leap, he caught the edge of the roof and swung silently up. Eric gave Tanya a push up — she was the only one of the group not trained in climbing — and then Eric, Emelia, and Diana all leaped up onto the roof, too.
