Book 2, Chapter 57

“Everyone who knows about Sibilant doesn’t seem to want to talk about him,” I said. “So I’m thinking he’s either the power behind the throne, or he’s your spymaster. And since you’re obviously the cabal’s hatchet man—one of them, at least—you seem like the kind of person who’d know a thing or two about this guy.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” she said.

“Well now that’s just an obvious lie.”

The assassin tried to shake her head, but my stone-shaped cap held it steady. “No, really. I get my orders delivered telepathically. I don’t get to ask questions or clarifications. And the standing order is he doesn’t exist.”

“I’m going to go with spymaster then. It’s nice to have an answer to that. It was starting to bug me how I couldn’t find any trace of him in your organization’s records.”

I doubted for even a second that the assassin had as little contact with Sibilant as she claimed. Telepathy just wasn’t cheap enough for someone who wasn’t at least stage four to rely that heavily on it. Dead drops and scrying made far more sense, or more likely, Sibilant had two or three people in a similar position to Velvet’s reporting to him. Successfully managing a network of informants meant doing a lot of compartmentalization so if one person got caught—an assassin who’d been baited into a trap, for example—they couldn’t give up too much information about the organization.

Now that I was starting to nail down just exactly who Sibilant was, I was starting to lean even more heavily towards suing for peace with the cabal. A paranoid-enough spymaster would be an enormous pain to dig out, and this one sounded like he kept his loose ends nice and tidy. Unless I wanted to spend months or even years playing games with Sibilant, it would probably be better to bypass him completely and go straight for Monarch.

Of course, that plan only worked if Monarch actually was the one in charge. If it did turn out that Sibilant was running things from the shadows, I basically had no choice but to deal with him if I wanted to break the Wolf Pack. To do anything less would be a temporary solution. I needed to know more before I made a decision.

“Let’s move on for now,” I said. “There are other people I want to know about. Let’s start with Velvet, since he seems to be my most immediate problem.”

“He wants to kill you,” the assassin said.

“I am aware. What disciplines does he specialize in?”

“Enchantment, I think. He focuses on mental and emotional manipulation.”

That wasn’t surprising, given what I already knew of him. That ribbon his daughter had been wearing was probably a lesser version of something Velvet carried on his person. He was the kind of enemy who kept sending minions and never took any risks himself, a problem that would keep harassing me relentlessly until I made the effort to stamp him out. I wondered if he’d repaired the ward stone in his castle yet or if I should pay him another visit soon.

“What about those two investigators of his, Ash and Echo?”

The assassin tried to shake her head again and failed. I caught a brief tinge of annoyance before she smoothed her expression back out and said, “Ash is an enforcer, not an investigator. She likes fire magic.”

Again, it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know. She wasn’t who I was interested in, though. “And Echo?”

“I don’t know,” the assassin said.

“Don’t start holding out on me now. So far, all you’ve done is give me easily obtainable information that I’d already figured out for myself, and I think you know that. That’s why you’ve been so cooperative, right?”

The assassin didn’t say anything. I went on. “Figured as much. Look, don’t think I won’t resort to torturing you to get what I want. I promise you, I can and I will. I’d rather not waste the mana, but I’ve been trying to capture one of you cabal mages all week, and now that I have one, I’ve got a lot of questions I plan on getting answers to.”

That would throw my plans to mass teleport a group of orphans out of the city tomorrow morning into disarray, but if it came down to getting information now in exchange for taking a few extra days to scrounge up the mana for the teleportation spell, that wasn’t a hard decision to make.

“Make me an offer.”

“What?” I asked.

“Make me an offer,” she repeated. “You want to know about the cabal. What’s it worth to you?”

“You’d sell them out, just like that?”

“It’s not like they’re my friends or anything. Job’s not worth getting killed over.”

I spent another hour’s worth of mana generation to sneak a quick second of mind reading in there. I’d kill half of them myself if this kid paid well enough. Well, either she had a very, very disciplined mind and had correctly guessed I’d skim her thoughts to verify what she was saying, or she was serious about turning on them.

“Okay, let’s say that I believe you,” I started. “What are you interested in? You want money? Mana? I guess that’s really the same thing here.”

“Power,” she said immediately. Her eyes lingered on the shield ward pendant hanging from my neck.

“What, the cabal’s toys aren’t good enough for you?” I asked. “That vanishing knife you had is practically the perfect weapon for a mage-hunting assassin.”

“I was surprised you knew what it was. And you asked about Echo. You know what she has, too, don’t you?”

If we were entering into negotiations, there was no point in denying it. “I do, but I have a sneaking suspicion that your guy in the cabal didn’t make it. Weaver, I think you call him.”

“He makes good stuff. That mask was his work. But the knife was something else. The master has a cache of them. But not even she knows how to duplicate them.”

“And you want me to do it for you?” I asked.

The assassin scoffed. “Those pieces? Of course not. Those are left over from the Age of Wonders.”

The what age now? I’d skimmed a dozen history books in the last few months, and I hadn’t heard any particular block of years referred to that way. I made a mental note to come back to that later when I wasn’t so busy.

“Then… Hmm, I see. You want the toys I took from the others.”

It was easy to spot the naked greed in the assassin’s eyes. “You can do better than that,” she said. “What else?”

“Something someone else has on them currently? Someone you’re assuming I’ll kill in the near future with the information you’re going to give me?”

“You’re doing good enough that you’ve killed three of us so far. Caught me, so might as well call it four. I figure you’ve got decent odds of getting another one or two before someone manages to pin you down.”

“I’m actually losing interest in killing the rest of you,” I said. “To be perfectly honest with you, your whole cabal is less impressive than I initially thought. The mana is nice, but nothing I couldn’t get elsewhere for less risk. I came here for some answers to a few nagging questions I had, and to ensure that you people wouldn’t be a threat to me. As far as I can tell, I’ve basically accomplished everything I needed to. Killing Velvet would wrap up a loose end, but I’m starting to doubt he has the resources to come after me if I decide to just leave.”

In truth, I was actually quite interested in those toys from the so-called Age of Wonders. Those were above and beyond anything else I’d seen in this life, and confiscating them would go a long way in defanging the Wolf Pack. If I was going up against someone who had a whole armory of trinkets at that level, I needed to reconsider my strategies. Just the weapons I’d seen already were serious threats to me.

“Where would you even go?” the assassin asked.

I gave her a flat stare. “Somewhere else. I don’t think the details are relevant to this conversation.”

“Suit yourself. I’m telling you that you’re not going to be able to hide in any village or town. We’ve got people in all of them.”

“I’m not looking for advice on this subject,” I said. “Let’s get back on topic. You want something powerful. I’m guessing you don’t much care where it comes from or how you get it. What is it?”

“I want to be a ghost,” she said. “Go anywhere, at any time. No one will ever see me unless I let them.”

I snorted. “Well, it’s certainly possible, but not without far more mana than you have. Which reminds me, I am keeping an eye on how fast you’re generating new mana. You’re not going to phase through the stone anytime in the next few hours, so I hope you weren’t planning your daring escape.”

“You can’t tell that,” the assassin said.

“Sure I can. This conversation’s been going on for a little over five minutes. You’ve generated one fiftieth of the mana you used when you escaped my stone snare trap. If I walk away and leave you here to free yourself, you’ll be able to escape in just over four hours. Though I suspect you’ll actually escape much sooner, because you know that spell can be cast for less mana if you concentrate and do it right.”

I took the fact that she was staring daggers at me now to be proof I was right. “How about this? You already know the basic versions of the spells you need, and you’ve got a knife that can cut through wards, albeit not without setting them off. What you really lack is mana. We all need more of that. In exchange for the information you have, I will give you a potion that will give you a chance to fix your lackluster ignition.”

“My lackluster what?”

“Your blessing, or whatever you want to call it. How much faster do you generate mana now than back when your core was dormant? It’s hard to call it without a baseline to compare it to, but I’m going to guess somewhere between five and seven times faster. Am I close?”

“No,” she snapped.

“So you have no interest in a potion that would make your core malleable enough to give you a second chance at igniting it, potentially doubling or even tripling your mana generation?”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Of course there is,” I said. “And I know how to make it. Did you think I took all those materials from Freak’s lab just for the fun of it?”

“Shit,” she swore. “You’re for real?”

“Dead serious.”

“I want the potion first.”

“Nope. Two reasons. First, I don’t trust you. Second, I have to make it.”

“I’m not helping you on credit,” the assassin said.

“I feel like letting you live is good collateral, but if you want more, I’ll return your knife to you. Just know that if you ever raise it against me again, I’ll kill you on the spot. And yes, I’ll see you coming, just like I did this time.”

I walked over to the hole in the wall and spotted the knife still laying in the street. Derro wasn’t all that active at night, at least not out here. A simple telekinesis spell was enough to bring it back to my grasp. I glanced over at the assassin, who was eyeing the blade hungrily.

“You know, I never did get your name,” I said.

“They call me Haze.” She paused, thinking. “I guess I won’t be using that much longer. My name is Rouri. What’s yours?”

“Keiran,” I said. “Well, Rouri, do we have a deal?”

“I’ll answer some questions, you return my knife and let me go. I’ll give you a week to make the potion and tell you everything else once you give it to me.”

“No. I’m not negotiating on this. You’re the one lacking leverage here. I’ll get answers to everything I want to know tonight, then I’ll give you your knife back. I’ll make your potion for you and give it to you when it’s ready, which will likely be closer to a month.”

“A month! Freak never took that long to make anything.”

“How would you even know?” I asked. “Besides, I’m not making anything as simple as his concoctions. That’s the deal. You want it, or should I start carving off pieces of you until I’ve learned everything I want to know?”

Shit. He’s got me. Better than being tortured to death, her mind whispered into my spell. It was important enough to me to know that she wasn’t immediately going to betray me that I decided to spend a bit more mana confirming it. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t betray me later, of course, which was exactly why I was withholding payment for now.

“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “We’ve got a deal.”