Free Web NovelChapter 18: Three Simultaneous Conversations And...
Nathan walked down the main street with his head lowered, his cloak partially covering the angle where dried blood still stained the side of his jacket, and his attention divided between Soul Sense, the rhythm of the street, and actively searching for a stall that sold what Liaraen had asked for.
The commercial district market was already closing for the day, but the food stalls were still operating. It was the last useful hour. The sunlight was beginning to tint orange against the dark walls of the buildings, and vendors were starting to lower prices so they wouldn’t carry inventory into the next day.
Warm bread.
Something sweet.
*The most diplomatically neutral choice in the market.*
He found what he needed at the third stall he evaluated. It was a small bakery, almost at the end of a side street, where an older woman was stacking loaves in a basket before closing. Nathan approached.
"Good afternoon."
The woman looked up. She sized him up quickly, without judgment, with the practical curiosity of seeing how much he was going to spend.
"Good afternoon, Hunter. What are you looking for?"
"Warm bread. And something sweet. The sweetest you have."
"I have fresh bread and honey buns. The buns are three coppers each, the bread is one."
"Two honey buns. Two loaves of bread. And..." Nathan looked at the options displayed on the counter. "Is that cheese?"
"Valley low cheese. Five coppers per portion."
"One portion."
"Anything else?"
"Do you have any fruit?"
"Apples, three for two coppers."
"All three."
The woman began packing everything in a piece of thick cloth with the mechanical efficiency of forty years in the trade. While she did, Nathan looked down the street, watching for any presence with a visible Seal approaching the stall. Soul Sense still reported no threats in the immediate radius.
"Is this just for you?" the woman asked without looking up.
"It’s for me and a traveling companion."
"Mmh." She added an extra apple to the package without comment. "On the house. Your traveling companion will appreciate it."
"Why the extra apple?"
"Because you ordered honey buns. That means the traveling companion is young, tired, and hasn’t eaten well in days. The apple helps the stomach process the sweetness without getting upset." She looked up and smiled slightly. "Forty years selling bread, Hunter. People don’t buy honey buns by accident. They buy them for someone."
*Excellent. Even the bakers in this city read between the lines.*
Nathan paid. Fourteen coppers total. He took the cloth-wrapped package.
"Thank you."
"Take care of her, Hunter. Whoever she is."
Nathan nodded.
And walked back to the alley with the package under his arm.
---
Meanwhile, in an office at the end of Five Anvils Street, Merchant Brenwick sat at his main desk with a glass of red wine he was no longer drinking. The glass had been in the same position for ten minutes. The evening light came through the side window and fell across the desk at an angle that specifically illuminated the stack of papers Brenwick hadn’t been able to process since midday.
In front of him, seated in a chair lower than his, sat a man dressed in the austere elegance of business contacts who preferred not to be identified as business contacts. Short black hair. No visible Seal. A small mark on the inside of his right wrist that Brenwick knew well and the rest of the kingdom wouldn’t recognize.
"Larian," Brenwick said, without looking up from the glass he wasn’t drinking. "Repeat the information to me."
"The Hunter hasn’t shown up at Five Anvils Street," Larian said, with the professional calm of someone used to reporting problems to his employer. "He’s two hours and forty minutes overdue by the most conservative transit time estimate. The inns at the north gate haven’t seen him pass through. The gate guards logged him entering the city approximately ninety minutes ago. But he didn’t reach the destination."
"Ninety minutes inside Greywall." Brenwick finally looked up. "That’s enough time to cross the entire city five times."
"Yes, sir."
"And confirmation from the other team?"
Larian paused briefly.
That pause was what made Brenwick know, before hearing the words, that the problem was bigger than he’d imagined.
"Also unreported, sir."
Brenwick set the glass down on the desk.
Slowly.
"Repeat that."
"The extraction team that was supposed to intercept the Hunter on the road, before the north gate, hasn’t reported to the agreed meeting point. The confirmation signal was due four hours ago. The backup protocol, two hours ago. The emergency protocol, one hour ago."
"Six professionals. Four hounds. Two active Draken bearers."
"Yes, sir."
"And none have reported."
"None."
Brenwick was silent for a long moment.
His face didn’t change. No expression of fear, anger, or surprise. Brenwick was fifty-two years old. Twenty-nine of those years he’d built this business. Expressions were a luxury that amateurs indulged in. But something in his hands went very still on the desk, and Larian, who had worked for him for eleven years, recognized that stillness as the functional equivalent of a scream.
"Larian. I want clarity." Brenwick pressed his fingertips together. "The merchandise is worth fourteen thousand gold coins. Fourteen thousand. The extraction team was paid six hundred for the job. The disposable Hunter, five silver coins. The investment-to-risk ratio was optimal. Every part of this operation was calculated so that if one piece failed, the others would compensate."
"Yes, sir."
"But every piece failed at the same time."
"It appears so."
"Which is not statistically possible under normal circumstances."
"No, sir."
Brenwick stood up. Walked to the window. Stared at Five Anvils Street without really seeing it.
"There are three possible explanations," he said without turning around. "One. The extraction team kept the merchandise and is going to sell it on their own to another buyer. In that case, they’re already fleeing, and we’ll lose the fourteen thousand but preserve the overall operation. Two. A third party intervened. A competitor who knew the route. Who had the resources to neutralize both the Hunter and the extraction team. Which means someone inside my network is passing information, and we’re going to have to clean house."
"And the third explanation?"
Brenwick turned around.
His face remained expressionless.
"The third explanation is that the F-Rank Hunter I hired to carry the box wasn’t the F-Rank Hunter I thought he was."
Larian went very still.
"Sir. With all respect. That’s statistically less likely than the other two."
"I know. That’s why it worries me the most." Brenwick returned to the desk. "The other two I can handle with money or violence. The third implies that someone in this kingdom is operating with information I don’t have—and that can’t be bought or eliminated until I understand exactly who it is."
Pause.
"Larian."
"Yes, sir."
"I want everything that can be known about Hunter Nathan Voss by tomorrow noon. Origin. Family. Class Awakening, if he had one and where. Seal type. Any detail about how he appeared in Greywall and why. I want to know if he is what he says he is or if he’s something else. And in the meantime, I want a second team on alert. If the merchandise is still within the city walls, it needs to be found before dawn."
"Understood, sir."
"And Larian."
"Yes, sir?"
"If you discover that the Hunter neutralized the extraction team on his own, I want you to come tell me personally. Not in writing. That’s a conversation I need to have in person."
"Yes, sir."
Larian stood. Made a slight bow. Left the office.
Brenwick was alone. He looked at the wine glass. Picked it up. Took a sip. The quality of the wine—which was excellent—no longer felt the same as it had two hours ago.
*Fourteen thousand gold coins,* he thought. *And possibly something much worse than losing fourteen thousand gold coins.*
---
In the alley, Liaraen Sael’thoryn had maintained her upright posture on the edge of the box for exactly fourteen minutes.
Hands folded on her lap. Back straight. Gaze fixed on the opposite wall of the alley.
Comply, she had said. Not obey.
She was complying.
It was an important distinction, especially when one was the second daughter of House Sael’thoryn and needed to maintain a certain internal consistency regarding what she was willing to accept from an unknown F-Rank human Hunter who had rescued her from a box and who, as far as she understood, had absolutely no authority over her—which made his instructions simple reasonable suggestions that she was choosing to follow for reasons independent of him.
That’s what she told herself.
It was working approximately sixty percent.
Soul Sense, of course, wasn’t a skill she possessed. But the Northern Kingdom elves carried the Seal of Yeva for fourteen generations, and elven blood retained a natural sensitivity to the presence of other living beings in the immediate environment—a weaker, less defined version of detection magic. Liaraen couldn’t count specific presences the way Nathan probably could. But she knew when someone was approaching.
And she knew, thirty seconds before they arrived, that three people had entered the alley from the opposite end.
She looked up.
