Skulduggery 4: Building a Criminal Empire Read online

  Chapter 1

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching us, but every time I glanced around the apartment above the bakery, I saw only early morning shadows.

  There were shadows of the bed and the little dresser, and there were shadows of the buildings around Eloy’s that cast long shapes in through the apartment window, but I kept feeling like I saw more than just four human shadows in among all the rest.

  Well, three human shadows and one halfling’s. Dar’s didn’t exactly reach the same length as mine or Ava’s, although his shadow was just about as tall as Penny’s. I watched our shadows for a minute longer, but then Dar made a vulgar gesture with his hands to cast an even more vulgar shadow on the wall. I laughed and brought my attention back to the conversation.

  “Where’d you go, Wade?” the redheaded pixie asked.

  “Just got distracted,” I answered Penny. “What were we talking about?”

  “What weren’t we talking about?” Dar asked as he leaned back in his chair and kicked his bare halfling feet up onto the bed.

  “Ugh, gross,” Penny growled. She swatted the halfling’s feet off the bed. “Some of us actually sleep there, you know.”

  “All I know,” Dar sighed dramatically, “is that you’ve gotten to sleep there two nights in a row. So the way I see it is the only way I’m gonna claim the bed for myself tonight is if I mark it as my territory, see?”

  “Like a cat?” the redhead snorted.

  “I thought cats pissed to mark their territory,” Ava observed calmly from her cross-legged perch atop the dresser.

  “Hey, whatever it takes.” Dar stood up and fumbled with the button to his pants before Penny shoved his arm.

  The halfling laughed and sat back down, but I noticed he didn’t put his feet back onto the bed. He knew as well as I did that you could only tease the pixie so much in the morning before she’d gut you like a fish.

  “We were talking about Eloy,” Ava said softly.

  “Maybe we should also be talking about getting another bed in here,” I smirked. “Unless we want to keep taking turns on who gets to sleep in it or keep sharing.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t mind sharing,” Dar groaned with a sideways glance at Penny.

  “Watch it,” I warned as the redhead blushed. So far, Dar had only teased Penny a little about the fact that we had slept together, but I knew she was irritated that he had guessed we’d had sex in the first place, and more irritated that she’d accidentally confirmed it to him.

  “Look,” Dar sighed, “if we’re gonna get up and start making plans before the sun’s even fully up, and before anyone’s gotten me any coffee, then I can’t be held responsible for what comes out of my mouth.”

  “Oh, you mean like that stench of day-old mutton I smell on your morning breath,” Penny muttered.

  “Right, Eloy,” I said quickly before their playful banter escalated into real irritation. “Now that we’ve gotten the miners to release their debt on his bakery, he should transfer the ownership over to us.”

  “Do we know the exact terms of our arrangement with the miners yet?” Ava asked quietly.

  “Not yet,” I answered. “I still need to set up a meeting with Lobrem to work out what percentage we’ll cut him in for in exchange for distributing in the dwarven district.”

  “But the bakery’s definitely ours?” Penny demanded.

  “Yes, that much has at least already been taken care of,” I replied.

  “Do we trust Lobrem?” Ava asked.

  I tried to see her expression, but the blonde’s face was hidden in shadows by the hood of her cloak, and I could only see the suggestion of her high cheekbones beneath it.

  “I’m not sure,” I said honestly, “but he’s given us no reason not to trust him yet.”

  “Plus, he did take care of the rest of Hebal’s men,” Dar pointed out.

  My shoulder gave a little twinge at the reminder of Hebal. It had been a few days since the showdown in the alley, but the knife wound to my shoulder still throbbed off and on. It was healing, thanks in large part to the fact that I’d cauterized the wound as soon as we pulled out the knife, but it still hurt like a bastard.

  It was a helpful reminder of just how much was at stake.

  “So we trust him until he shows us he can’t be trusted,” Ava suggested.

  “Until?” I asked. “It may not come to that. What if he proves to be entirely trustworthy?”

  “Very few people are entirely trustworthy,” the blonde assassin said with a shrug.

  Given her line of work, I wasn’t surprised by her answer. The Assassin’s Guild certainly dealt with a higher rung than the scum of the earth that the Murderer’s Guild handled, but they still weren’t exactly known to work with saints or angels.

  “We’ll handle that when we have to,” I responded. “In the meantime, as long as we’re able to agree to whatever terms we need to with Lobrem, we’ll be able to distribute all throughout the dwarven district. Plus, I think we can get Lobrem to agree to get the dwarven guard to look the other way whenever we distribute.”

  “That would make things a hell of a lot easier,” Penny sighed.

  “And it would make us a hell of a lot richer,” Dar agreed. “Can you imagine how much whiskey we can distribute if we don’t have to worry about the dwarven guard coming after us?”

  “Especially since we have a whole warehouse distillery in the dwarven district now,” I said with a grin. “Or at least, we will as soon as we finish setting it up.”

  “I don’t know why we already had to move Azure there,” Penny sniffed. “We don’t even have the distillery set up yet, so he could have stayed here a little longer.”

  “He’ll be safer there,” I reminded her. “Besides, it’s a lot easier to hide a baby dragon in a huge warehouse than inside a bakery.”

  “I know, I know,” the pixie growled. “I’m just saying.”

  “We’ll have the distillery up and running there in no time,” I reassured her, “and then we’ll all have to spend a lot of time there making sure things go smoothly, so you can spend as much time with your little dragon as you want to.”

  “Will you get the paperwork from Eloy today?” Dar asked.

  “We’ll have to,” I answered. “As much as I’d like to persuade him otherwise, I don’t think I’ll be able to convince him not to go after his son.”

  “Maybe Skam could?” Penny suggested. “He was in one of the elves’ labor camps for years, after all. Maybe he could tell Eloy how hopeless it is?”

  “I couldn’t ask Skam to relive his time there,” I said as I shook my head. “Besides, I need him to keep staying at Adi’s cottage until Marver comes back.”

  “I guess someone’s gotta keep an eye out for the chef,” Penny grumbled. “Assuming he hasn’t already gone to the elves with what he knows.”

  “I don’t think he will,” I answered, “but we need to talk to him all the same.”

  “If he’d gone to the elves, we’d all already be strung up by our thumbs,” Dar joked, but then he swallowed nervously.

  There it was again: a shadow just outside my line of vision, and one that I swore was more than just a bird flying past the window. I touched the Opalstone necklace for reassurance, but it gave no indication of its magic.

  In fact, it had been silent since the day I took it from Hebal right before I separated his skull from his brains. I hoped the necklace was like the keys and would work when I needed it to, or else I would just have to figure out the trick to making it work on my own.

  If there was someone watching us, I didn’t want to let on that I knew anything about it, but I still wanted to
ask Ava if she noticed anything strange about the shadows in the apartment. I stretched my arms out and slowly rose to my feet like I was just waking up my limbs, and I wandered over to the seated assassin.

  “So we’ll see Eloy today and get the paperwork,” I said as I still pretended to stretch my limbs, “and we’ll have to check in on Cimarra and Selius at the theatre and make sure the count hasn’t created some new kind of crisis for us.”

  “It has been a few days,” Penny observed. “Doesn’t that mean we’re due for a Count-Kieran-Crisis?”

  “You should trademark that,” Dar chuckled.

  As Dar and Penny complained about the Count, I approached Ava until my face was right beside her hood.

  “I think someone might be watching us,” I murmured.

  “They are,” the assassin remarked calmly.

  “They are?” I repeated, but I kept my voice low. “Who? And where?”

  “I’m not sure,” Ava admitted, “but I have a feeling they’ll show themselves soon.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked quietly.

  “The sky is just beginning to grow light outside,” she replied, “which means the sun is almost up. The day elves must have finally won the temple duel.”

  “Took them long enough,” Dar interrupted. “But since the sun does look like it’s about to rise, what do you say we move this discussion to Osman’s? Unless any of you assholes know how to make coffee.”

  “You don’t even know how to light the stove,” Penny smirked.

  “Now listen here, I--”

  But Dar didn’t get to finish his thought. The shadows that had been looming since I first woke up now all suddenly sprang to life from every corner of the apartment. I saw one person’s shadow dart out from under the bed, grab Dar by the ankles, and yank him under the bed as the halfling yelled out in surprise.

  Two more shadows loomed up from the far corners of the room behind some empty boxes, and they launched themselves toward us at the same time that another figure dropped down from the ceiling and landed squarely between Ava and me.

  It looked like we weren’t quite done with the assassins after all.

  Immediately, I grabbed the knife from my belt and slashed at the hooded figure between the blonde assassin and myself. The figure ducked my blow and sent the hilt of their own blade toward my jaw. I rolled out of the way just as Ava kicked out at the back of the figure’s knees and dropped him to the ground.

  I heard a scuffle over by the bed, but I only had a second to glance over and see that Penny was wrestling with another assassin and Dar was still underneath the bed with the shadow that had grabbed him from their hiding place. Before I could move to help them, the figure at my feet grabbed my ankle and twisted it hard enough that I dropped to my knees right beside him.

  I elbowed the assassin in the nose, and when the figure’s hand automatically rose to his face, I saw the weathered skin on thick fingers and knew the assassin we were dealing with must be a dwarf.

  I’d just never known a dwarf who could move so quietly.

  Ava whipped out a cord from her cloak and looped it around the distracted assassin’s throat. As she yanked back on the cord, the figure’s hood fell back and revealed our assassin to be a dwarf, just like I’d thought, but he just growled from behind his thick beard and ripped the cord loose from his neck.

  “I’ve got him,” Ava assured me as the dwarf staggered to his feet.

  He lashed out at the blonde assassin with her own cord, but she caught the end of it and used it to yank the dwarf closer to herself. I raised my knife to stab him in the ribs, but he released the cord and danced out of both our reaches.

  “Go!” Ava said again. “They need you!”

  I knew the assassin was right. She could handle herself, but there were still three other assassins in the apartment besides the dwarf now fighting Ava. I darted across the floor toward Penny and Dar, and as I surveyed the situation, I made a quick guess as to who needed me first.

  Dar had managed to roll out from underneath the bed, but he was in a deadlock with the assassin who had grabbed him. Penny was in a deadlock too, but she had two assassins that she was keeping at bay. One was another dwarf, and the other looked human-- or at least, he might have looked human before Penny’s knife had started to carve up his face.

  I saw her stab at the human assassin again, but this time she had to yank a little harder to pull her knife out from his shoulder. It only took a second longer, but a second was all the burly dwarf needed to take advantage of the two against one odds. He grabbed the pixie by her red hair, but he didn’t have time to finish his plan.

  Instead, he had to deal with me.

  I barreled into his back, and in spite of how much heavier the stocky dwarf was, I managed to surprise him enough that he let Penny go and tumbled to the floor at the same time. It was only a second later that I realized he’d tumbled to the floor on purpose, and he used his new position to kick out both our legs from under us.

  The pixie dropped down, but she kept fighting the human assassin like nothing had changed. The man with the carved-up face stabbed down at her, but she was too quick for him, and the man only succeeded in getting his wrist sliced up before he could jerk his hand back out of the way.

  I stumbled when the dwarf kicked at me, but I used the stumble to give a little extra force to my weight and fell down on top of the assassin with my knife raised. I directed my body weight onto one of his arms to keep it pinned to the floor, but the dwarf raised his other fist to punch me in the shoulder that was still healing from the knife wound.

  Fucking assassins.

  I swore at the pain that throbbed through my shoulder, but the dwarf celebrated his successful hit a moment too long, and I took advantage of his momentary distraction to jam my knife straight into his ear. He roared with pain as the tip of my blade scrambled his brains a bit, but when he didn’t stop yelling, I jerked my knife out and rammed it through his vocal cords instead.

  That shut him up quick enough.

  I glanced back at the dresser where Ava had been, but the blonde assassin was gone, and the dwarf who had attacked us was nothing more than a lifeless heap in black. I rolled away from my own dwarf attacker, and when I popped back up beside Penny, I saw the flash of a blonde shadow on the other side of the bed where Dar and his own personal assassin were.

  I trusted Ava to help my halfling friend, so I directed my attention back to Penny and the human who thought he could take on the redhead pixie. When the human assassin overextended himself in a useless punch, I grabbed his arm to pin him at the shoulder. His other arm still flailed out, but I saw that Penny had already carved up his arm as well as his face, and I wondered if he had any flesh unmarked by her blade.

  I waited for his arm to flail out again, and when it did, I grabbed it and pinned him at the other shoulder. He wrestled against my grip like a flopping fish, and we tottered back and forth as he tried to squirm out of my grasp.

  “Finish him!” I shouted to Penny.

  We stumbled against the bed, but I managed to pull him back upright before he could take us both down and wriggle free. Despite the twinge of pain in my shoulder, I bent my knees low and twisted with as much force as I could to turn us back around to face the pixie thief. The moment I swung him around, Penny was ready for us, and she shoved her blade straight through his back and into the man’s heart.

  I held him too tightly for him to squirm away from her blade this time, so the redhead just pressed her dagger deeper into his chest. She only eased up on her pressure when a bubble of blood burst across the man’s open lips.

  For a second, I felt a flash of sympathy for the human assassin. Humans weren’t the enemy, and I didn’t want to kill any if I didn’t have to, but he’d attacked us first, and I’d be damned if we didn’t do whatever was necessary to protect ourselves and our business.

  I dropped the man’s arms, but before his corpse collapsed to the ground, Penny yanked her dagger out of the man
’s back. She wiped it on the man’s black cloak, and we both turned to face the last remaining assassin. Dar and Ava had him cornered, but the dwarven assassin had a whip that he used to lash out every time one of them got too close.

  “Give up now,” I told the dwarf. “It’s over.”

  “It might be over for me,” the dwarf growled, “but it’ll be over for you soon enough. You know they will not stop, Ava.”

  Ava didn’t seem concerned. She hooked one finger into the crook of her blade’s hilt, and then she twirled the dagger in her hand so it flashed black and silver in the early morning light.

  “Why don’t you ask Fallor how worried that makes me?” the blonde growled. “Or better yet, why don’t you ask anyone from the Assassin’s Guild in the halfling district?”

  “Except you can’t,” Dar huffed as he finally caught his breath. “Because they’re all dead.”

  “Yes, thank you, Dar,” Ava said dryly.

  “Even so,” the dwarven assassin grunted, “you cannot stop us all, at least not those of us who still live by the code.”

  “Does that code include grabbing a halfling’s feet and yanking him out of his chair before he’s even had coffee?” Dar demanded and rubbed his hip where he’d landed on the hard floor. “So rude.”

  “She will not stop,” the dwarf warned. “Even if we all stop, she will not. They never do.”

  All at once, Ava stopped her blade mid-spin and hurled it at the burly dwarf’s throat. It flew across the space between them so fast that the dwarf didn’t even see it before it wedged itself into his windpipe with a little pop. He opened his mouth again, but now all that came out was a sighing hiss, and then his body thudded against the apartment floor.

  “Is everybody okay?” I demanded as we all wiped our weapons clean on the four bodies littered around us.

  Dar checked himself as if he might have been stabbed in a dozen places and had not even realized it, but the halfling was unhurt. Ava had only a slight scratch on the back of her hand from the last assassin’s whip, and Penny’s hand was just a little bloody.

  “It’s not my blood,” the pixie assured me. “I had to shove my hand in that asshole’s bloody face to get enough leverage to pull my knife out.”