Tristan’s head whipped around.
“Did ye see the pictures?” she asked.
His eyes glowed as he thought back. He grunted in acknowledgment.
She nodded. “Claw marks around the house, things knocked over…and a meticulous murder scene. Are yejokin’?”
“The Guild hasn’t mentioned that in any of the reports, unless it’s in the files we couldn’t access.”
“It probably isn’t. They don’t seem overly bright, the Guild. Anyone with reasonable intelligence who wants an organization to work in has moved on to Momar. Even before that, the Guild as a whole seemed mostly ineffective. It’s no wonder ElliotGraves found it so easy to come out on top. Momar, however…” Her thumb stroked the rock slowly, and her thoughts continued to drift. “Momar is very intelligent,” she murmured. “Cunning, calculated, a great planner…”
“Do you think he’ll catch on?”
“I don’t know. I know next to nothing about him, his people, or his organization. Their systems are shut down tight. Their lips are sealed. They seem to have loyalty, and I don’t know if that’s induced by fear or something else. I’d guess fear, but I don’t like guessing. Guessing gets people dead. I need to get deeper into all this, and for that, I need tech.”
“Your proposed applicant ended up in Naomi’s pile.”
“Of course it did, ya donkey. What do ye think, I’m going to go right out and ask Jessie to hire a criminal? As a past Jane, she’ll havethoughtsabout doing that. No, ye gotta massage the situation a bit. Let her ask Mr. Tom about it. Let her ask Naomi. Austin Steele. All people who won’t give a fiddler’s fart if this Dick got into a bit of Dick trouble. Did he kill anyone? No. Did he torture someone for information? No. Compared to the lot of us, he’s clean, like. Jessie needs time to see that. I’ll go bug her in a day or so.”
Tristan shook his head. “Don’t you find all this manipulation exhausting? You never strike me as a person with a lot of patience.”
“I don’t have patience foreejits.But massaging a situation just right to get what ye want? Now, that’s a game. That’s fun.” She dropped her rock into the basket. “Look up my magical breed, boyo. This is what we do. We’re good on the battlefield, oh, aye, but our true talent is the art of manipulation.”
He nodded slowly as he rocked, taking that in. He really had no idea. Back in the day, she could bribe a king’s royal staff, then travel from tavern to brothel, from bard to kitchen maid, collecting information. Each little scrap was pieced intothe whole until she had the complete picture—or near enough. She could always follow the informational trail, albeit literally, as she went from place to place and physically heard things from mouths or read them in print.
Now? Ones and zeroes. Numbers and code. Cloud storage, firewalls, aliases, and anonymous message forums. It was anightmare,like. Even if she did go on the road to meet with people—and she did need to get Jessie invited to a whole lot of mage dinners to do just that—she didn’t know where to find the buggers, and equally didn’t know how or even where to send them a secret message to arrange it all.
Ivy House might’ve made her sharp between the ears, but this new technology made her feel every year of her age.
When in doubt, hire out.
In the meantime, she had enough to keep her busy and things swimming along.
“Sebastian has done right by us so far, even with his slips,” Niamh mused, jiggling her rocks around. “The slips are a problem for him, but as far as our outfit is concerned, we’re in good shape. They’re making a bollocks of their own situation, though. Given their situation eventually needs to merge with ours, he’s making bags of things.”
“How do you mean?” asked Tristan. “The message boards are all lit up with fear and speculation about where he might strike next. They think he’s climbing back to the top.”
She shook her head and picked up another rock. Her mind went to the random threads waving at her to notice, needing her to connect them. People, jobs, and those caught up in the middle of things, forced to bow to authorities they wanted no part of. Some of those people would make great allies. Some of those would have to be killed. Others would need to be exploited.
Thatwas what he should be focusing on. She said as much.
“He’s being showy with deaths that no one really cares about,” she said. “He’s playing in the shadow depths when Momar has brought dirty deeds into the mainstream. He’s waging battle the wayweneed to be waging battle instead of the way a person with his clout and social standing should. He’s stuck in yesteryear. And sure, maybe he’d eventually get somewhere. He’s smart. But he’s moving too slowly.”
“What do you propose?”
She grinned and dropped her rock into the basket, then set the basket on the ground. “War. They framed us, and now we’ll frame them. Time for the two of us to do a little traveling.”
THREE
Nessa
“Do you want a grilled cheese?” Sebastian asked as Nessa walked through the tiny kitchen in their latest residence.
Her stomach growled. “No, thanks.”
Sebastian’s grilled cheeses made her wonder what he had against cheese and butter—they never had enough of either. She missed their cooks in the tunnels. Or Mr. Tom. It took a load off her always having to make food. Or, hell, she missed Austin. That guy was a wizard in the kitchen. She missed their friendly but cutthroat competitions to make the best dish.
She smiled through the pain, remembering Jessie and Niamh and Brochan and even Tristan?—
