Skulduggery 7: Building a Criminal Empire Read online

  The dwarven guards might all have personalities that were about as unpleasant as the smell of their district, but they were well-trained, so they were nothing to fuck with. They had almost sole authority in the dwarven district to enforce the law however they wanted to, and they even had some power in the Entertainment District.

  Sure, they were still under the boot heels of the elves, just like all the rest of the races, but they liked to fool themselves that they were better than the rest of us just because the elves let them have a little taste of power. Of course, it wasn’t real power when someone else controlled how much or how little authority they gave out, but the dwarven guard didn’t seem to mind, just as long as they could boss around all the other races in the city.

  It was about time that someone took them down a notch.

  The next time that I circled the dwarven guard, I was able to glance at Dar again to make sure that he was still alright in his own fight. My halfling friend was still on his feet, but he looked like he had decided to take a different tactic than me.

  Dar whirled around his opponent like a spinning top, and every so often, he lashed out with his dagger to try to get a blow in before the dwarf realized what happened. It didn’t seem like he had been remarkably successful so far, but at least the halfling was still in one piece.

  I was just glad that I’d been able to freeze the dwarven guards, so Dar and I had taken out two of the bastards before they even knew what hit them.

  It was hard to fight against well-trained dwarves who were both better armed and better armored than us, since after all, it wasn’t exactly a fair fight when we only had cloaks to protect us, and our daggers were made for a bit of back-stabbing-skulduggery, and not for hand-to-hand combat.

  But then again, the odds had never really been in my favor, and I had never let that stop me before.

  I lunged toward my opponent’s right side as if I could just slip my dagger straight through his armor, in between his ribs, and then into his right lung to pop it like a balloon.

  The dwarven guard swerved the right side of his body away to avoid my dagger, but since he was right-handed, that meant that he also moved his heavy axe further away from me. As the guard twisted away from me, he allowed his left side to be exposed, and even though it was still covered up with thick dwarven armor, it was just enough of a weakness that I thought I could use it.

  But the opening would only last for a second, so I would have to make my next strike count.

  I aimed my dagger up toward the guard’s left wrist, since it was the closest part of the dwarf that wasn’t covered up with armor. I slashed my blade across the exposed flesh like it was a brush on a canvas, only instead of paint, thick maroon blood spewed out of the artery in his wrist.

  The dwarven guard staggered backward, but before I could attack him again, he twisted forward and brought the full force of his heavy axe down on me.

  Immediately, I dropped my dagger so I could use both hands to grasp the guard by his right wrist just before he slammed the blade of the axe into my chest. My muscles shook with the effort to keep the dwarf’s arm exactly where it was, but I knew that if I let go now, I would get a chest full of axe blade.

  I couldn’t just twist away from him because if I dropped my hands even for a second, the guard would finish the blow. I glanced at his left wrist and saw that the blood still gushed out of it, so I guessed that it was only a matter of time before the bastard bled out.

  So as long as he didn’t kill me before then, I just had to wait him out.

  When the dwarven guard started to get a little paler just above his red beard, I decided that I didn’t want to wait anymore. Instead, I kept my hands exactly where they were, but I shifted all my weight onto my right foot. Then, as soon as I felt secure, I kicked forward at the dwarf’s kneecap.

  His knee might have been protected from weapons by armor, but that didn’t mean it was protected from blunt force trauma. The moment my boot collided with the dwarf’s kneecap, the bone crunched and then popped out of place.

  The guard screamed, tumbled onto his back, and dropped his axe down to the ground beside him.

  I had just a second to grab my dagger from where it had fallen, and then I jumped on top of the dwarven guard to finish him off. As I brought my blade down toward the guard’s eye, I could hear grunts and the sound of ringing metal from Dar’s fight behind me, but I couldn’t afford to turn around just now.

  Instead, I gripped the hilt of my dagger with both hands and drove it toward the dwarf’s eye socket. At the last second, the guard jerked his head to the side, so my blade shaved down the side of his face instead of right into his brain, and then the bearded bastard rammed his elbow toward my throat.

  I pulled away in time to avoid his blow, but it threw me off balance, so the dwarf was able to shove me away. While I tried to recover, the guard stretched out his hand toward his axe, but it had fallen far enough away that he had to flip over onto his stomach and pull himself toward it.

  I must have really done some damage to his knee, since he couldn’t even crawl forward on his hands and knees.

  As the dwarven guard’s fingers reached for the handle of his axe, I launched myself forward again, and this time, I buried my dagger into the exposed flesh just underneath his skull. The muscles of his neck were thick, but I adjusted my grip on the handle and shoved it in further until the blade completely disappeared into the dwarf’s neck.

  The guard gave a little gurgle as the tip of the dagger burst out of the front of his throat, and then his body went limp underneath me.

  I twisted the dagger just a little more to make sure that he was dead, but just as I was about to pull the blade out, I heard a low cry behind me. Immediately, I ripped the dagger out of the dwarf’s neck, jumped to my feet, and spun around to go help Dar.

  My halfling friend was crumpled on his side at the edge of the clearing, and the fourth dwarven guard was nowhere in sight.

  Chapter 2

  I sprinted across the clearing toward Dar.

  The moment I reached him, I dropped to my knees, tossed my dagger aside, and slapped him across the face. My hand came back sticky with blood from his temple, but almost as soon as I slapped him, the halfling blinked like I’d just woken him up from a nap, and then he slowly glanced around himself.

  “What the--” Dar started. “Oh, that fucking bastard!”

  “Where’d he go?” I demanded.

  “I’m sorry, Wade,” the halfling said as he reached up to touch the wound on his temple. “That dwarven asshole got me, and then he must have taken off.”

  “I’m sure he went back to report to Lobrem,” I said.

  “We should go after him,” Dar said as he tried to push himself to his feet. “We can’t--”

  “Take it easy, my friend,” I said and held him steady. “Just let him go. It’s alright.”

  “But--”

  “I mean it,” I cut him off. “It’s fine.”

  A movement caught my eye from the direction of the cottage, but even as I reached for my dagger again, I saw that it was only Cimarra. The beautiful dancer ran toward us at full-speed with an armful of clean cloths, and she moved so quickly that she almost couldn’t stop herself when she finally reached us.

  She caught herself with a dancer’s grace before her long legs tumbled out from under her, and she dropped to her knees beside us.

  “I was watching from the window,” Cimarra panted. “So I thought-- well, so I brought bandages.”

  “Did you see where that last bastard went?” Dar asked.

  “It looked like he ran back the way that we came,” the dancer replied, “but I lost sight of him pretty quickly.”

  “I promise that it’s fine,” I said. “Let’s just get your head wrapped up, alright?”

  Dar grumbled but let Cimarra take a look at his temple.

  “It looks pretty superficial,” the raven-haired woman said. “He must have hit you at just the right angle to knock you unconscious,
so he had time to escape.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t try to just finish me off,” Dar groaned.

  “He probably realized I’d come after him,” I growled. “And he wouldn’t get the chance to report back.”

  “Yeah, so shouldn’t we go after him?” the halfling asked again.

  “It’s not like they found anything valuable here,” I said. “There’s no whiskey at the cottage, and the distillery is far away from here. Besides, I wanted to send a message to Lobrem, and I think killing three out of four guards is a pretty good message, don’t you?”

  “Well, that’s true,” Dar said as he brushed his fingers against the cloth that Cimarra had tied around his head.

  “We’ll obviously still need to be careful and make sure that we aren’t followed back to the warehouse,” I said, “and we’ll need to tell everyone else to do the same thing, but otherwise, I’m not worried.”

  “What should we do with the bodies?” Cimarra asked after she finished tucking in the ends of Dar’s bandage around his skull. “I assume we can’t just dump them in the woods for the wolves to find.”

  “As much as I’d like to feed the wildlife, that’s probably not a good idea,” I snickered.

  “Because Lobrem will report them missing, right?” Dar asked.

  “No, even Lobrem isn’t that stupid,” I said. “I mean, he’s pretty close, but not quite. He knows he can’t report them missing, and he definitely can’t say anything about the fact that we killed three dwarven guards.”

  “Why not?” Cimarra asked.

  “Because then Lobrem would have to admit that he sent the dwarven guard to attack me,” I said, and I gestured to the silver pin on my cloak that indicated I was leader of the Thief’s Guild. “And since I’m an officer of the Empire now that I’m a guild leader--”

  “That would basically be like admitting to treason,” Cimarra said. “Will you tell the elves what Lobrem did?”

  “No, I’d rather deal with Lobrem in my own way,” I said. “And besides, there’s no definite proof that he sent those guards after us, so he could just as easily deny it.”

  “So then remind me why can’t we just dump the bodies in the forest?” Dar rubbed his head.

  “I don’t want to take any chances that someone else might find the bodies in the woods,” I said. “At the end of the day, it wouldn’t really affect us, but it might make for some… unpleasantness, and I would just as soon avoid that if we can.”

  “That makes sense,” the beautiful dancer said. “I’m glad that you’re the guild leader even more than I was before.”

  “Me, too,” I laughed. “It certainly helps things run a little more smoothly for us, and it’ll make it much harder for Lobrem to make a move against us.”

  “What are we gonna do about him, anyway?” my halfling friend asked.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I said, “but we’re definitely going to take him down somehow.”

  “And the dwarven guard?” Cimarra laid her hand on my arm. “I don’t want them to come after you everywhere you go.”

  “They wouldn’t be bold enough to actually make a move against me in the city,” I said. “At least not yet.”

  “So you think they will eventually?” the beautiful dancer asked.

  “Yeah, I have a bad feeling about the dwarven guard,” I said. “They’re too hard to predict, and as long as Lobrem has control of them, that means that we don’t.”

  “We could just send Ava after all of them,” Dar said with a grin.

  “I’m sure that our favorite assassin could eliminate all of them, but it would take a while, and it wouldn’t exactly be subtle,” I laughed. “I don’t want to just kill them all, because then they’d just be replaced by new dwarven guards.”

  “So then what do we do?” Cimarra asked.

  “Nothing yet,” I said. “But I’ll be damned if I don’t find a way to eliminate the dwarven guard completely.”

  “If anyone can think of a way, it’s you,” the beautiful woman replied. “And once the dwarven guard is out of the way, then the only soldiers left in the city would be elves.”

  “And most of the elven guards are under the control of Golierian,” I said.

  “Who’s under our control,” Dar added.

  “Exactly.” I smirked. “So yeah, we’ll come up with a plan to get rid of Lobrem and the entire dwarven guard. But for right now, all we have to worry about is how we’re gonna get rid of these bodies.”

  “Didn’t you bury Rindell somewhere out here?” Dar asked. “Couldn’t we just throw the guards into her grave?”

  “We buried her bones and ashes after we cremated her,” I said, “but yeah, we could bury the dwarves in the same place.”

  “I’m sure the madame would love that,” Cimarra said with a smirk.

  “What do you mean?” Dar rubbed the skin just above his eyebrow.

  “Well, Madame Rindell might be dead, but I feel like she would still appreciate it if we threw three men on top of her,” the dancer said with a spark of laughter in her blue eyes.

  Dar burst out into laughter until he winced and touched the wound on the side of his head.

  “Fair enough,” I said with a grin. “Why don’t you help Dar get inside the cottage, and I’ll grab the wheelbarrow to start moving the bodies?”

  “Of course,” Cimarra said. “Marver is inside, so I’ll see if he has any herbs to help Dar, and then I can come help you bury the bodies.”

  “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here,” the halfling grumbled. “I can get inside just fine by myself, thank you very much.”

  “I’m sure you can.” I rolled my eyes. “But it’s not up for discussion.”

  The halfling huffed, but he took Cimarra’s arm and let the graceful dancer help him toward the cottage. After I waited for a minute to make sure that the last dwarven guard wasn’t going to come back and try to take me by surprise, I headed toward the cottage, too, but I went around back and found a gardening wheelbarrow.

  The dwarves were all heavy and broad-chested enough that I could only fit one of them into the small wheelbarrow at a time, but I had just finished wheeling the third body out to the back of the cottage when Cimarra finally came back out to join me.

  “This must be where we got rid of the last traces of Rindell,” I told the dancer as I gestured to a newly packed patch of soil beside the tree line. “The ground should still be soft enough that we can dig it back up pretty easily.”

  “And we don’t need to burn the bodies first like you burned the madame’s?” Cimarra asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. “We only burned hers because Twila poisoned her, and just in case anyone found Rindell, I didn’t want there to be any connection that would lead back to Twila.”

  “It’s very sweet how protective you are of her,” Cimarra said with a smile.

  “I’m protective of all of you,” I said. “You’re not just my team. You’re also my friends.”

  “I think you might feel quite… friendly… toward Twila,” the blue-eyed dancer teased.

  “Oh, I don’t know about--”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” Cimarra said. “She’s very beautiful, and she’s already shown how capable she is, and how much she cares about you.”

  “You’re a good woman, Cim,” I said. “I got very lucky the first night that you danced for me.”

  “Oh, I remember,” the raven-haired woman said as she traced her finger down my chest. “But like Dar said-- you have very good taste in women.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” I leaned down to kiss her full lips.

  The last body in the wheelbarrow shifted its weight, and the arm flopped out to graze against my leg.

  “I guess we should go ahead and take care of the guards,” I sighed.

  “Well, if we don’t hurry, Dar will insist on coming out and trying to help, even though he needs to stay still long enough for the bleeding to stop,” Cimarra agreed.


  “But it’s not a bad wound, is it?” I asked.

  “No, it’s pretty shallow,” the dancer said. “It just bled a lot, but Marver grabbed some herbs to help stop the blood flow.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then let’s see how quickly we can bury these dwarves.”

  The soil was still soft like I had thought it would be, so once we grabbed a shovel from the back of the cottage, it didn’t take long to dig down into the earth. We had to dig a bit deeper past Rindell’s bones since there were three bodies to bury, but she was dead, so I didn’t think she’d mind if we scraped her bones around a little inside their grave.

  Once we finished digging the hole, we dropped all three bodies into the ground on top of each other. It took even less time to cover them up than it had to dig the hole in the first place, so after we packed the earth down, we covered it with a few stray branches from the underbrush so it wasn’t obvious that someone had just dug a grave.

  Then as soon as everything looked good, we headed inside the cottage to check on Dar and Chef Marver. We found them in the kitchen, but it was obvious that Dar wasn’t exactly being a cooperative patient. He was seated on a stool by the sink, and the catering chef kept trying to unwrap the bandage from around his head, but Dar continued to duck to avoid his hands.

  “I’m fine, really,” the halfling protested. “Just leave it on.”

  “It’s been long enough that the bleeding should have stopped by now,” Marver growled, “so just let me take the leaves off, damn it!”

  “You don’t exactly have a caring touch,” Dar said. “It damn near hurt more when you put the herbs on than when I got hit over the head.”

  “Oh, boo, hoo,” Marver said as his bushy white eyebrows knit themselves together.

  “The sooner you hold still, the sooner it’ll be over,” I laughed as Cimarra and I joined the two halflings.

  “Ugh, easy for you to say,” Dar said, and he jerked his head away from the chef’s grip. “You’re not the one with a fucking hole in the side of your head.”