First it was dark, then there was a light, so bright that it hurt the eyes, and voices sing out in the distance. “Come, come, come…” One step. Then another. The ground becomes uneven. Slabs of stone, stretching out ahead.
Ellison Davo made one last circle of the ballroom before heading out. He bumped into Wynefrede Aumberden near the over-sized doors that opened out onto the garden balcony. She was now wearing a pair of glasses.
The ballroom was lit with hundreds of torches, oil lamps and candelabras. Ellison assumed there must have been some windows open on the balcony level to create a cross-breeze to keep the room from filling with smoke.
They walked in a diamond formation with the two Singletons in the center. Mad Eyed Brendon was at the front, still carrying their prisoner, Wanda and Clinio to the right and left, and Matilda and Ellison brought up the rear. A couple of other mercenaries were walking through the woods, ahead and to the sides.
Ellison collapsed to the ground and his attacker flung himself down after him, probably to finish him up from close up. That was odd, Ellison thought as he struggled to get free. Normally people just kicked him when he was down. He could smell the sweet, metallic taste of blood in his mouth and felt it on his hands.
“Sard it.” Matilda slapped the tree she was standing next to as the Armforge Guild sentries raised the alarm. “I was hoping we’d catch them asleep.”
Wynefrede Aumberden didn’t even look at Raphe Faryndon when she lay down on her cot. The day after her thwarted escape attempt had been miserable. Rambo and his squad kept a close eye on her and she wasn’t allowed near the bridge construction. Instead, she was forced to watch from a distance as Raphe and the Armstrong Guild made design mistake after design mistake. She’d tried to offer advice, but nobody trusted her anymore. Even Raphe refused to consider her suggestions, which stung a bit.
“We found them.” Ellison Davo walked into Pleasance Pratt’s office on Barking Street followed by Matilda Scarletstrike in all her armored, muscled glory. The room immediately felt smaller when Matilda stepped in.
Once his head was patched up, Raphe Faryndon really threw himself into the bridge construction project.
“Weren’t you guys hired to protect us?” asked Raphe. “Why are you letting these guys just take us?” He looked around at the sentry and the other men in the camp. “I recognize your colors. And your tattoos.” Now that he mentioned it, Wynefrede could see a tattoo of a red fist smashing an anvil on Sewell’s bared upper arm. He also had a red patch in the shape of a fist was sewn onto the chest of his padded jacket, as did the other fighters in the camp. They looked warmer and more comfortable than Rambo and his men, who all wore metal breastplates and other, pieces of armor on their shoulders, knees and hands.
“This is unconscionable,” said Raphe Faryndon. “I’m a captain of industry. I don’t hike through the wilderness.” “Plenty of captains of industry are hikers,” said their new guard, who had introduced himself as Rambo but who reminded Wynefrede more of a low-rent Napoleon, with his bicorne hat, tight white pants and navy jacket.
They loaded the gun crates back on cargo wagon and propped Ellison up next to the driver. “You guys did a good job,” Clinio Lind told him and Matilda. “Whether Rodge personally knew about this or not, it definitely looks like the Armstrong Guild was involved.”
By the time Shanwei helped Ellison stagger the rest of the way down the corridor, crawl up the staircase, and get to the docks, most of the battle was over. Two men with their hands up in the air were sitting on a wagon holding six wooden crates and a couple of other fighters were bleeding out slowly on the dock leading to a half-loaded cargo ship. Ellison didn’t recognize the dying fighters. They weren’t part of Matilda’s crew, so maybe they were with the kidnappers. Or innocent bystanders.
“You really want to send these two little guys in first?” asked Medium Dave. “I’ve seen them both run, they’re fast.” Matilda stuck her head down after Ellison. “Both of you, head straight to the far exit. One of you stay there and close it off if you can. The other one can come back and tell us where it comes out so we can have a team search the area.” She leaned her head down further. “How tight it is down there?”
Ellison expected Matilda to just kick down the doors but the 12-ten-foot-high slabs were formidable up close. Instead, two of her mercenaries pried the lock off with a crowbar and they were in.
The main floor of the old Elysium Financial Corp. building was littered with banknotes. Ellison stopped to pick one up. It was slightly bigger than what he expected paper money to look like, stamped with the bank’s logo, and bore a hand-written note promising the bearer the sum of 100 gold coins
The cell doors creaked open and the guard stuck a lamp inside. Wynefrede Aumberden blinked and pulled herself to a seated position. A few feet away, Raphe Faryndon moaned and rubbed at his face, leaving dark streaks across his cheeks.
The transition back to real life was always jarring. One second, he was falling down a bottomless tunnel, the next, standing upright in Krim’s welcome area. He staggered, then caught his balance. He was back in his real body and all the aches and pains and mysterious itches he’d accumulated since the last time he’d died were all gone.
Ellison left Matilda with her dinner. His dinner. All three of them. Afterwards, she would check in on the mercenaries they’d hired to watch the newspaper, just in case the Nightingale showed up. Then she’d go and recruit some assassins.
Ellison glanced at the wall clock on his way out of the depot. It was getting close to dinner time, so instead of trying to hunt Matilda around the city he decided to go to the Barley Bow for his usual meal. There was a good chance she’d show up on her own, anyway, to steal his food. The Barley Mow got a new cook recently, and the menu had actually gotten pretty good.
Ellison was in luck. Not only did the depot manager recognize the description of the two delivery guys, but they had just returned from a run.
Krim’s central square had the main teleportation gate into the world at the north end, and was surrounded by Banking Street on the east side, Upping Street on the south, and Knots Hollow Way to the west. City Hall — which also housed the grid administration in-world offices — was across Upping to the south. The King’s Arms was on the corner of Upping and Banking streets. Both were good places to find new newcomers, but if he was looking for long-time Krim residents pretending to be noobs, they’d probably stop by one other place first.
“Of course I’m not the Nightingale.” Matilda slammed her mug of watered-down hiring hall ale on the table between them and reached for a dagger.
