Night guild 3, p.6
Night Guild 3, page 6
He almost made it.
His hand was on the handle of the door out of the arena when he heard a grating, familiar voice behind him.
“I see you,” the voice said shrilly. “You are in my power now!”
Ronan turned, and there, standing in the corridor behind him, was the horrifying, red-robed, golden-skulled face of Kaishog, High Priest of the Silent Brotherhood.
Chapter 4
“By the god Mala, you will die!” Kaishog yelled. Behind him, a group of soldiers clustered. They were in different livery from the regular king’s guard men — a red band with a golden circle over it.
Ronan hauled the door open and stepped outside, and Kaishog and his soldiers followed.
“Watch out!” Ronan called to his friends. “Stick close!”
He and his companions ran out into the street away from Kaishog and his guards, straight into the sea of people who were leaving the arena after the end of the show.
Ronan looked around at the crowd of people, taking in the scene.
There were several bookmakers — the people whose job it was to distribute the gamblers’ winnings — in the street, and they were having a hard time. The people who had bet were all wanting to cash in their winnings at once. Not only that, but the winnings were far from small. The customers crowded around the bookmakers, waving slips of paper and shouting.
The bookmakers were also holding slips of paper in the air, and they were shouting for the people to form orderly lines to queue up and get their money. The gamblers were behaving in anything but an orderly way, crowding around, shoving each other, and shouting in excitement at the amounts of money they’d won.
The chaos was exactly what Ronan and his friends needed as they came out into the crowd.
They all had their stealth fields in place, but for some reason, the stealth fields did not work as expected. Instead of letting him and his friends blend into the crowd, they appeared as the reigning champions. Perhaps that was what the crowd was expecting to see.
Ronan did not have time to answer the question because nearly as soon as he’d asked himself, the guards who were with Kaishog came rushing out into the street, looking for them in the crowd.
The stealth fields did not fool the guards either. There was no hesitation either in the guards or in Kaishog as they all charged forward to attack Ronan and his friends.
Tanya dropped her stealth field, and one after another, the others did the same. Since the spell was not stopping their enemies from recognizing them, there was no point holding the spells up.
Ronan and his friends turned, unable to flee because of the wall of people who had now turned to see the spectacle. An appreciative murmur went up from the crowd. “It’s the prisoners!” the crowd shouted. “It’s the winners of the arena!”
Spontaneous cheers and applause broke out in the crowd but then were immediately replaced by a loud murmur of discontent when the guards ran up with swords drawn, trying to capture the heroes.
“Hey, they won their freedom fair and square!” one brawny fellow shouted.
“Yeah, let them be!” cried another. “You’re just bitter because you bet against them, but some of us had faith in their prowess!”
A louder mutter of agreement, tinged with anger, ran through the crowd. The guards, who had run up with blades drawn, hesitated. They had come out here expecting to fight a group small group of people, but instead, they were faced with a large portion of the city’s population, and the citizens were angry. The guards pulled up, looking at each other, then back at Kaishog.
Ronan saw that Kaishog had made a crucial mistake. He, too, had dropped the magic that he had been using to disguise his appearance, but unlike Ronan and his friends, Kaishog’s appearance was positively horrific. Nobody could look at him and feel sympathy or any desire to support his cause. Oh, no doubt Kaishog wore the robe of the Silent Brotherhood of Mala, but Ronan suspected that in Saon City it took more than a priest’s robe to guarantee support from the public.
“Get back!” the captain of the guards shouted, brandishing his spear at the nearest members of the public. “Get back or I’ll stick you, I swear it!”
“I’ve had enough of being pushed about by guards!” shouted a tall woman. She was wearing a blue robe and carried a heavy stick in her hand. “The guards have taken liberties for too long. Why, I heard it was guards who had these prisoners arrested, for no crime more than that they wouldn’t pay bribe money to the guard company. I’ll not see these good folks arrested, not after they’ve won their freedom in the arena!”
Kaishog’s shrill voice screamed from farther back, “Enough of this nonsense! Get them! Get them! Kill anyone who gets in your way.”
Ronan could not see him just at that moment, as the press of guards and people was too much, but he recognized the gold-skull’s shrieking, ugly voice.
“Back off, freak show!” one of the members of the public shouted.
“Yeah, get lost, you creep! Who are you, anyway?”
“A guest of the king!” Kaishog yelled. “High Priest of the Temple!” Those prisoners are responsible for the destruction of the Temple of the Silent Brothers!”
“A likely story!” the woman with the heavy stick replied with scorn. “Those four? Lose your bets did you, gold face?”
The crowd suddenly roared with laughter. The guards pressed forward suddenly, trying to reach Ronan and his friends, but there was a roar of protest from the crowd. The people of Saon surged forward, pressing themselves in between the guards and Ronan and his companions.
“Go on through, mate, you and your friends,” a beefy townsman said excitedly to Ronan and his friends. “We’ll give these guards a taste of their own medicine, and you all can get away.”
Ronan pushed forward, followed by his friends, into the gap the townsman had created. The citizens surged around them, roaring for the blood of Kaishog and the guards. At that moment, Ronan heard a familiar voice. “This way,” the voice said. “Come on, quickly, while the crowd is distracting them.”
Ronan looked up to see the very welcome face of Jallor, his one eye gleaming with excitement and amusement at the guards’ predicament.
Ronan urged his three companions through the gap that Jallor had opened in the crowd. Diana, Tanya, and Eric went through, then Ronan followed. He threw a last glance back over his shoulder to see an irate Kaishog yelling about his prisoners as the woman in blue, backed up by a host of other townsfolk, wagged their fingers at him, berating him for his actions.
There was absolutely nothing Kaishog could do about the situation. As Ronan looked back, one of the guards struck out at a nearby townsman with a booted foot. The man responded with a stick, striking the guard on the upper arm. The whole crowd roared like an angry sea. Fruit, stones, and other missiles flew toward Kaishog, and he and his guards were forced to back away, retreating toward the arena entrance. Ronan felt it likely that a full-scale brawl was about to erupt in the city square.
“Hurry!” Jallor said, and Ronan did so.
Pandemonium broke out in the crowd behind them as Ronan and his friends slipped through the crowd. As they climbed a short hill up from the square they’d been in a moment ago, Ronan glanced back. He smiled as he saw Jallor’s three goons in the square; they were using all the tricks that Ronan and his friends had taught them, and they were encouraging the crowd as they did so.
“Looks like your friends are putting your training to use!” Ronan said.
“You believe it,” Jallor replied with a wicked grin. “They are naturals when it comes to that kind of thing. Let’s go.”
They hurried on through the town, rushing through the bustling crowd with their heads down. Nobody paid them any attention, and Jallor led them swiftly and with certainty through the maze of streets in which Ronan and his friends would quickly have become lost.
“In here,” Jallor said, darting down a lane. They followed him through a dark alleyway that seemed to be populated solely with people who lived in squalid houses and stared hollow-eyed from their windows.
Looking around, it reminded Ronan of the back alleys of Uon, an island in the Twelve Isles, where the guild of the destitute lay. There, the strange, undercover guilds that served the underworld of the poor, the mad, the addicted, and the broken held sway, ignored or unknown by the more affluent denizens of the city at large.
Here, in the back streets of Saon, Ronan saw people who were just as broken but did not have the advantage of a guild to lean on to give them a bit of dignity and belonging.
“You see the poor of the city,” Jallor said quietly to him as they slowed their pace. “The broken ones, we call them, brought low by a lifetime of hardship and pain. Deshyor and the other masters of the city do what they can for these poor wretches, but there is not that much that can be done for them.”
“We have such where I come from, too,” Ronan said. “But at least there they are represented by guilds.”
When they left the alleyways, they found themselves in the quiet, deserted streets of the industrial area around the ironworks where Master Deshyor had his base of operations. It was a little busier than it had been when they had arrived the night before, with workers and tradesmen moving here and there through the cobbled streets amid the sound of clanging and the shouting of workmen echoing from the warehouse yards. But Ronan and his friends kept their heads down and put their stealth fields in place. When the occupants of this area of the city looked, they just saw Jallor — a well-known face in these parts — hurrying along with a group of his fellow gangsters in tow.
“Well, now, my fine friends,” Master Deshyor said, opening his arms wide as they entered the yard. “You have done very well indeed — better than ever I thought you would! Why, what a stir you have caused, and the reputation of myself and my band of philanthropists has been greatly enhanced by your escapades!”
Ronan frowned for a moment. It took him a moment to process the maser’s flowery, verbose Ghennetian speech. While all the others he had spoken to favored simple, direct language, Deshyor seemed to glory in using unnecessarily complex phrases to express himself.
“Master Deshyor,” Ronan said simply, smiling and accepting the florid gangster’s embrace as the big man approached. “We’re glad to have helped.” He turned to his companions. “Isn’t that right, friends?” he added.
Eric, Tanya, and Diana all nodded their agreement.
“Excellent, excellent,” Deshyor said. “And I fear that my choice of verbiage is a little too ebullient for your linguistic ability! Allow me to simplify my speech to suit your outlander ears.”
He chuckled fruitily, then snapped his fingers to a younger man who stood behind him. “Tea, in my office, now, please,” he said with a proprietorial wave of his hand. “And now, my friends, follow me, please. I have something to say to you in a language that every man understands. Yes, yes, you guessed it — the language of money!”
He chuckled to himself, then gave orders to Jallor to go back out and see what was happening back at the market square by the arena.
“Make sure those guards aren’t interfering with the paying out of the bets to the good customers of the arena, Jallor,” he admonished. “They will be bitter about losing, and even more so now that the convicts have slipped from their grasp.”
“Believe me,” he continued as he led them into his office, “the guards will stick at nothing. In the unlikely event that anyone ever does really escape a trial by combat, they are likely to end up with a knife in their backs if they hang around in the city.”
“The city of Saon seems terribly corrupt, Master Deshyor,” Eric said. He was walking along by Tanya, supporting her as she came along with him. She looked pale after her exertions, but her mouth was set in a determined line.
“Oh, yes,” Deshyor said, unconcernedly. “Very corrupt, and yours truly is the worst of a bad bunch. But every man must have his trade, and I expect you four know about that as much as I do. Now, come in here and take a seat, and let me pour you a cup of tea.”
The tea had been brought in by the silent servant, but Deshyor poured with his own hand, and then, looking them carefully in the eye, he lifted the first cup and downed it in one gulp.
Ronan smiled, realizing that this was a great courtesy. The old gangster was showing them that the pot of tea was not poisoned. Ronan wondered how necessary such courtesies were in this seedy underworld of a city.
The tea itself was no less thick and bitter than it had been in the inn — more so, if that were possible — but all four companions drank it with pleasure anyway. It was refreshing to the spirit, and none of them had eaten or drunk since the night before the fight.
“And now,” Deshyor said, once the first cup had been taken, “I have for you the fruits of your labors.” As he spoke, he drew out a silver key from a fold of his robe and moved to a chest in one corner. Crouching over the chest, he unlocked the lid and swung it back, revealing a dark space that seemed to be full of bulky bags.
Deshyor grunted and muttered to himself as he pulled bags from the box and laid them clinking on the ground. The four companions glanced at each other. Though this gangster had held true to them so far, now was the most likely time for treachery if he were going to betray them. But Deshyor did not seem like he was in the mood for betrayal. After a few moments muttering over his chest, he slammed the lid closed again, snapped the lock, secreted his key back into his robes, and returned to the table with a flourish.
“See,” he said, “how you can trust Master Deshyor.” He gestured expansively to three large and heavy bags that he laid on the table in front of him. “Fifty percent of the proceeds, just as I promised you. A very lucrative operation in the end. And now, as a little sweetener to the deal, I have something of a tip for you.”
The three assassins gazed at him expectantly, expecting him to bring out more gold, but he produced nothing else. Instead, he sat down and stared keenly into their faces. “I have something for you, you know. Something valuable. Something you would pay well to know, but I will give you it for free.”
“Yes?” Ronan said, excited. There was something in the man’s manner that told him whatever he had to tell, it was serious.
“I know where the Silent Brotherhood’s gold skull sleeps,” Deshyor said. “Now, usually, I would charge for such information, but since I believe that our interests align in this matter, I’m happy to stretch a point.”
“What do you mean, our interests align?” Diana asked, a little suspiciously.
“Oh, come now,” Deshyor replied. “Everyone in the market square heard the man’s words. He said that you four are the ones responsible for the destruction of the Silent Brotherhood Temple. Arrant nonsense, of course. What rubbish! No one would believe it.”
“But…?” Eric prompted him.
Deshyor chuckled. “Well, it’s like this. Those gold skulls are legendary. It’s said they are highly trained magickers and powerful advocates for the interest of the priesthood. That one, Kaishog, well, he was shown straight into the king’s palace in the middle of the night and has been by the king’s side ever since. Now, I have a friend or two in the king’s palace — I have friends everywhere, you see — and as I said, I know where he sleeps. The ignorant market folk of Saon may not pay him any heed, but I know that a creature of his level of training and subtly must have been severely rattled to let out a secret like that in the middle of the market square. They are the ones who blew up the temple? Really? He’s not going to just make that up. I know better than that.”
“But why would you tell us where he sleeps?” Ronan asked. “And how do your interests align with ours?”
Deshyor sighed. “You would make a very poor criminal here in Saon,” he said theatrically. “So many questions. Very well. It’s like this. These Silent Brothers have been the bane of my life these past few years. Oh, when all they wanted was to make sure that everyone worshiped Mala and respected the priesthood, that was fine. It even kept a bit of order in the city and reined the excesses of the guards in. But it wasn’t enough.
Next, it was men on the king’s council, the men in the guard, and acolytes of Mala everywhere in the city, causing problems and making trouble for me and my folk. They want to drive everyone out of the city who threatens their authority, you see. The king was easy enough to usurp, but my crew and me, that was another story. We hold the real power in Saon and have done for years, but they threatened to unseat us. I lost a number of good friends to their clutches. And then”—he leaned forward and lowered his voice—“there is this talk of dragons.”
“Dragons?” Ronan said. “What of that?”
“Oh, you know best, I’m sure!” Deshyor said with a laugh. “I won’t give you away. But there’s talk that a blue and yellow dragon was seen on the mountains not far from where the temple used to be, just after the big explosion. And the rumor is that the Silent Brotherhood’s main goal was the suppressing of the resurgence of dragons. You see, here in the kingdom of Ghennet, people have been wondering about the existence of dragons for years. The brotherhood wanted nothing more than to make sure that no one ever thought they were real, and they wanted to control any information about them and keep the whole thing under wraps, you see? But in Ghennet, people talk, and the rumor has been for a long time that they were not wanting to protect people from dragons, more they were, in fact, wanting to keep the dragons to themselves, to keep their power, as it were. Do you see?”
“I see,” Ronan said, though he was not sure if he did exactly. “So, you want to let us know where Kaishog sleeps so that we can eliminate him… because it will make life easier for you?”
“And because of the dragons,” Deshyor said. “Because the dragons are the prophesied beings, their reemergence is the thing that will usher in the new age of harmony and bring about the great prophecy of Mala! That’s why I want it to happen. If it’s true — and I believe it is — that the Silent Brotherhood have been suppressing the existence of dragons so as to stop the age of harmony coming to pass, then it’s the duty of every right-thinking worshiper of Mala to oppose them and bring about the resurgence of the dragons.”
