Skulduggery 4: Building a Criminal Empire Read online

  “Are you hurt, Wade?” Ava asked softly.

  The blonde assassin’s hood had dropped, and her blue eyes shone with battle-fever as they met mine.

  “No,” I said quickly. “They’ll have to try harder next time.”

  My shoulder gave a little throb, but otherwise, I was fine. If the assassins kept up at this rate, the rest of our band would end up becoming as good at fighting as we were at thieving.

  And we were damn good thieves.

  “I thought we were done with these fuckers,” Penny sighed. “Didn’t we end this when we killed your guild leader, Ava?”

  “We finished the Assassin’s Guild in the halfling district when we killed Fallor,” the blonde halfie corrected the other woman. “But we only slowed down the other Assassin’s Guilds.”

  “Apparently we didn’t slow them down enough,” the redhead muttered. “Between the elves and the assassins, I think we’ve made enough enemies to last a lifetime.”

  “Or a few lifetimes,” Dar chuckled.

  “Just don’t forget about all the enemies we’ve already taken care of,” I said with a grin. “Hagan, Hebal, Fallor.”

  “And Taranath,” Penny added. “Even if setting him up did destroy Rindell’s dancehall.”

  “Getting nostalgic for your time with Rindell and her little doves?” Dar laughed.

  “Um, no,” the redhead fired back. “Just because you’re all gooey for Miss Teacakes doesn’t mean the rest of us are.”

  “You mean you’re not gooey for Miss Teacakes?” the halfling smirked.

  “Oh, you know what I fucking mean!” Penny swore.

  I laughed, and it was a nice break from thinking about how long the four assassins had been inside the apartment without anyone noticing. I’d never known that dwarves could be so quiet, but all assassins were, so I figured the dwarves were no exception. The human assassin had been a surprise, but since the rest were all dwarves, I guessed they had come from the guild in the dwarven district.

  We were going to have to do something about that if we wanted to distribute our whiskey in that district without any trouble. We would already be taking a big risk with the elves all on the lookout for whoever had gotten the halfling drunk, and the last thing we needed was for all the dwarven assassins to be after us, too.

  “What did he mean?” Dar asked our blonde assassin. “He said ‘she will not stop.’ Who is she?”

  “I cannot say for certain,” Ava responded. “He might have only meant another assassin, or he might have meant-- but no, that wouldn’t make sense.”

  “What wouldn’t make sense?” I pressed. “Tell us, Ava.”

  “Perhaps he meant the guild master,” the assassin explained.

  “You mean the elf in charge of all the assassin’s guilds?” Dar clarified. “The force behind the throne?”

  “Perhaps,” Ava said again, “but the last I heard, our guild master was a male elf, not a female. Of course, that was back when Fallor was approved to be district guild manager, so perhaps things have changed since then.”

  “Has it been that long?” I asked.

  “No,” Ava answered, “and that’s why it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, it’s also not like guild masters ever involve themselves in the day-to-day activities of their guilds,” Penny added. “It’d be a first as far as I know.”

  “We’ve started an illegal whiskey business, we’ve destroyed the halfling district’s Thief’s Guild and Assassin’s Guild, and we took out the head of the dwarf mafia,” I said with a shrug. “So I guess there’s been a lot of firsts lately.”

  Penny’s face suddenly turned as bright as her hair, but Dar had the good sense this time not to comment on it. I gave the redhead a little smile, and it seemed to relax her enough that she prodded the dead dwarf at our feet.

  “So, what are we going to do with all these assholes?” the pixie demanded.

  “I, for one, am getting mighty tired of burning bodies,” Dar huffed. “Can’t we just throw them off the roof or something?”

  “Like suicide would explain the knife wounds in their throats and faces?” Ava gave a low laugh. “Not if we want the elves to stay off our trail.”

  “Any ideas from our fearless leader?” Dar asked me.

  “I’m thinking,” I muttered.

  I’d hoped the Rainbow Keys would give me some sort of direction, but they were still as silent as my necklace. Still, they hadn’t let me down yet, so I knew when I really needed them, they would be there for me. Until then, I would just have to use my own brains to figure out a solution to the four dead bodies in our apartment.

  “I don’t think there’s anywhere we can move them in the city,” I began, “unless we want to take them all the way out to Falrion Forest.”

  “That’s a long way to ride with four dead assassins,” Penny pointed out. “And a whole lot of jail time, or worse, if anyone catches us with them.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I agreed. “So instead of trying to get rid of them, I think we should set them up, make it look like somebody else did it.”

  “Who?” Dar asked. “We’ve taken out the big guns of the dwarf mafia, as far as I know, and it’s not like we can blame four deaths on the elves.”

  “I wish,” Penny muttered.

  “If it had just been one, we could have made it look like an accident,” I sighed, “but four is a lot, and it’ll have to look like either a hit or a brawl.”

  “Assassins do not brawl,” Ava said dryly.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” the halfling laughed.

  “Just because you enjoy trying your charms on the wrong people and getting punched in the face doesn’t mean everyone else does,” the pixie pointed out.

  “So you think I’m charming, eh?” Dar strolled over to Penny to nudge her in the ribs. “See, and here I was thinking there was only one man that you found charming.”

  “Technically speaking, you’re not a man,” I observed.

  Dar roared with laughter, and Penny shot me a grateful look. We might have slept together, and I was already thinking about having her again, but I understood that she didn’t want the details of our relationship advertised, not even to Dar. The halfling always meant well, but sometimes he took a joke too far, and his punchline… well, it got him punched by the fiery pixie.

  “I have an idea,” Ava said quietly.

  “Let’s hear it,” I told her.

  “Who is the biggest rival of an assassin?” the blonde halfie asked.

  I liked where this was headed.

  “A murderer,” I answered.

  “You know, I’ve never really been clear on exactly what the difference is between a murderer and an assassin,” Penny remarked. “No offense to you, of course.”

  “I am not easily offended,” Ava said with a shrug. “Our guilds are often business rivals, but we usually have enough targets of our own that we don’t have to steal from each other. Broadly speaking, assassins are more skilled and more trained because our targets tend to be more skilled and trained, or at the very least, they tend to be important figures.”

  “So the Murderer’s Guild gets hired to take out… less skilled people?” Penny guessed.

  “Precisely,” the assassin responded. “Usually, the Murderer’s Guild gets hired for grudges, revenge killings, cheating husbands.”

  “Just normal everyday stuff, right?” Dar laughed.

  “Usually,” Ava agreed. “Sometimes, there is overlap between our jobs, but only sometimes.”

  “Well, this is about to be one of those times,” I announced. “We’re gonna set up these bodies and make it look like a hit by the Murderer’s Guild.”

  “That’s a solid plan,” the halfling said. “So first things first, I guess we better move the bodies, right?”

  “We’ll need to load them up in the wagon,” I agreed. “Ava, do you know how to make it look like the Murderer’s Guild took them out?”

  “It won’t be hard,” s
he responded. “I just need a few flowers.”

  “I know where to get some flowers,” Penny offered. “I’ll meet you at the wagon in five minutes.”

  “Sure, you go on ahead,” Dar called as she headed to the apartment door. “It’s not like we need help carting four read bodies down the stairs or anything.”

  “Weren’t ya just trying to explain to me that you were a man?” She shot him a withering look over her shoulder when she reached the door.

  “Penny?” I called, and she stopped halfway through the door frame. “Be careful-- we don’t know for sure if anyone else is out there.”

  “I’m always careful,” she said with her chin pointed in the air.

  Then she was gone down the stairs to get the flowers that Ava needed to set up the Murderer’s Guild for the four corpses on our apartment floor.

  “With any luck, this will get the other assassins off our backs for a while,” Ava said as she started to drag the first body toward the stairs. “If we’re very lucky, it might even start a turf war.”

  “As long as it keeps our enemies occupied until we can make our next move, I’ll be happy,” I said and hauled another body toward the stairs.

  We moved the bodies in sections, so once we got all four to the top of the stairs, we took them down the steps one by one. As soon as they were at the bottom, I sent Dar to the back door of the bakery to keep a lookout, and then Ava and I carried each body one at a time to the back door.

  The sun had just barely risen, and even though the elven temple ritual had given us almost a full night’s sleep, there still weren’t many people out and about yet, especially not since we were in the halfling district. As Dar constantly liked to remind us, halflings were a laid-back race and didn’t like to rush headlong into silly things like waking up and starting the work day.

  He always said it was his great sacrifice for our cause.

  I rolled my eyes at the thought before Ava and I loaded the first body into the back of the covered wagon. Penny still wasn’t back yet, but I didn’t think it had quite been five minutes yet, so she still had some time to come back with the flowers. Dar gave the all-clear to load the second body, and by the time we finished loading up the last corpse, Penny was still nowhere to be found.

  “She’ll catch up,” Ava announced, “but we’ve got to move if we’re going to frame the Murderer’s Guild before the murderers actually wake up.”

  “I think I see her,” I said when I spotted a flash of red hair at the end of the street. “Let’s give her half a minute more.”

  Ava crawled into the back of the wagon to make sure all the bodies were out of sight underneath blankets that were thrown around to look sloppy enough that no one would give them a second glance. The blonde assassin positioned herself in the middle of the bodies, while Dar finished hitching the horse up to the wagon and then climbed up onto the wagon seat beside me.

  I could tell from the movement of the red hair down the street that Penny was taking an indirect route back to us, just in case anyone was watching, and I had just seen the redhead enter another side street to weave back around to us when I heard a voice that made my blood freeze.

  “And just where are you two going so early in the morning?” the voice asked.

  I turned toward the speaker of the polished elven accent and groaned inwardly. Two elven guards had decided they had nothing better to do than approach the bakery and interrogate us.

  Fuck.

  And we hadn’t even had coffee yet.

  Chapter 2

  “Are you deaf?” the elf demanded. “I said, where are you two headed?”

  I couldn’t risk a glance behind me to see if Ava was still in the back of the wagon, and I hoped Penny would see the elves before she came back and got herself involved in this mess too. We’d been harassed by elves before, but at least we didn’t have illegal whiskey in the back of our wagon this time.

  Then again, I wasn’t sure what cargo would carry a harsher sentence-- barrels of outlawed whiskey or the dead bodies of three dwarves.

  The elves wouldn’t care anything about the dead human in the back.

  “Just going on a bit of a run to pick up supplies for this here bakery,” Dar said cheerfully. “We like to get an early start, you know.”

  “Does this human work for you, then?” the elf challenged. “I’m not sure who would come to a bakery that lets humans make the food.”

  The other elven guard spat at the ground, and I was honestly surprised he hadn’t just spat right in my face.

  “Well, actually--”

  “Dar owns the bakery,” I said quietly.

  Dar and both elves swiveled their heads to look at me like I had just sprouted horns.

  “If you own this place,” the spitting elven guard said, “then why is it called Eloy’s?”

  Even though I had spoken, they still addressed their question to the halfling. They still viewed halflings as inferior to elves, but they were a significant step above us human scum.

  It has not always been so, the keys sang quietly in my mind. It will not always be so.

  Both elves sniffed the air, and I wondered if they sensed the magic of the keys. They were hidden in the apartment upstairs, and I wondered, not for the first time, how they were still communicating with me. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and tried to keep my gaze rooted on the ground, but when my fingers wrapped around a very distinct set of keys, it took everything in me to keep my surprise from showing on my face.

  What the fuck were the Rainbow Keys doing in my pocket?

  The first guard who had spoken shifted inside his polished armor, but before he could sniff out the magic any further, I gave Dar a little jab in the ribs, and the halfling launched into fine form.

  “Well see,” my friend began, “what happened was this: I started to get into the food business a little while ago, honestly a long time ago, like when I had my first mutton pie, and you wouldn’t think it would be good, but if you get the pastry just right, it kind of-- what’s the word? Point is, it makes you forget you’re eating mutton for a minute, so--”

  “Get to the point, halfling,” the second elven guard cut him off.

  “So anyway, it started, more or less, when I took over my cousin’s catering business,” Dar hurried on, “and it’s doing pretty well, if I say so myself, so I thought and said to myself, ‘Dar, why don’t you go on and expand?’ And then when Eloy said he wanted to sell…”

  I stopped listening to the halfling and started to think about how we were going to get out of this if these two elves weren’t satisfied by Dar’s answer. Or if they caught another whiff of the keys’ magic. Or, worst of all, if they caught me with the keys actually on me.

  There was a slight movement from inside the wagon, but I couldn’t look around to see what had caused it. I couldn’t even look up from where my gaze was fixed on the ground. The elves thought humans were so far beneath them that they didn’t even like us to look them in the eyes, and even though the idea of seeming meek and mild made the blood boil inside my veins, I knew it was a necessary evil if we wanted to get away unscathed.

  “So, see, we’re still gonna call it Eloy’s even though it’s gonna be mine,” Dar was saying, “just like we still call it Adi’s even though that’s mine now too. On account of the branding that has already been established.”

  “You must be doing well for yourself,” the first elf sneered, like it was impossible for anyone besides an elf to make something of themselves.

  “Can’t complain,” Dar admitted.

  Any movement from inside the wagon had completely stopped now, and there was still no sign of Penny. I kept my gaze directed downward, but I let my eyes scan the ground as if I might find the answers in the morning shadows.

  “If you own this… bakery,” the second elf said distastefully, “then you should have the accompanying paperwork to prove it.”

  “Of course, of course,” Dar said quickly, “but if you don’t mind, we’ll be late to pi
ck up our supplies if we don’t get a move on, so perhaps we could…”

  As I stared at the ground, I saw a new shadow suddenly appear on the stones. It looked an awful lot like a person on the rooftop of the bakery, and I swallowed at the thought that we might not have gotten all the assassins. But then, even assassins wouldn’t risk killing their targets in broad daylight in front of two elven guards.

  “Go get the papers,” the first elf commanded.

  “We don’t have them,” I said in a low voice. “I haven’t picked them up yet.”

  “You haven’t--” Dar began.

  “You should see to your human,” the second guard interrupted. “It seems you might be overpaying him.”

  “He’s not my--”

  “I’ll pick up the paperwork today,” I growled, “just as soon as we pick up our supplies.”

  I didn’t mind if the elves thought I worked for Dar, and I wouldn’t have minded even if they thought I scrubbed the bakery’s floors for a living. Let them think I was just a lowly human, just as long as it kept them away from our growing whiskey empire.

  Dar was saying something else to the elves, and it kept them occupied enough that I risked an upward glance. I didn’t look at the bakery rooftop directly, but I pretended to study an odd cloud formation in the sky just above the guards’ heads. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of movement on the bakery roof.

  A soft wind whispered around us, and the figure on the roof remained perfectly still as a black cloak billowed around her in the wind. The breeze blew back the hood of her cloak ever so slightly, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Ava.

  “You’ve got all the answers but no papers to back it up, don’t you?” the first elven guard sneered.

  “Like he said,” the halfling said, and from the edge in his voice, I could tell his patience was wearing as thin as my own, “we’ll have the papers--”

  “Fire!” a woman’s voice shrieked from a side street nearby. “Help, somebody! Fire!”

  The elven guards glanced at each other, and I knew they wouldn’t be able to refuse the woman’s cry for help. They might not care about anyone but their own kind, but they also wouldn’t want to piss off their commander. Commander Vardreth was a son-of-a-bitch, but he was nothing if not by the book, so these assholes would have no choice but to respond to the emergency of one of the citizens they were supposed to rule over.