He took a lantern off the wall and started down the stairs without hesitation. Apparently murder by stairs wasn’t on the agenda today.
We descended the staircase and turned left to a huge, old wooden door. The door opened to a wine cellar. We passed through a dark tunnel formed by beer and wine barrels stacked on their sides almost to the fifteen-foot ceiling, and reached another door, even better reinforced than the last one.
My guide knocked three times, then swung the door open. We went through that doorway and ended up in a well-lit room. A long old table, flanked by two benches, stood in the center, its surface stained and scarred. Today it held a stack of papers at the far end and a map of the city drawn on a four-foot-long, square piece of sturdy parchment. To the left, a small bar, a simple wooden counter with shelves behind it, offered a variety of cups and tankards.
A man looked at me from the table. He was tall and lean, with warm, golden skin the cosmetics companies would callsandand tawny light brown hair, cut a bit longish, so it framed his handsome face. He drew the eye in that classically attractive way: a sculpted jaw he kept clean-shaven, strong, angular features with a touch of elegant arrogance, and smart amber eyes. Right now, everything about him was sharp and dangerous, like a well-honed dagger, but when he went about his day job, he was charming, sophisticated, and effortlessly handsome.
In our world he would be in movies and make millions. People would line up to see his films, and they wouldn’t be disappointed, because he was an excellent actor.
He must’ve come directly from a meeting or some formal occasion because his clothes didn’t fit his current expression. He wore a high-collared white shirt left open to display a muscular neck and a narrow golden chain around it. A leather vest embroidered with golden thread caught his narrow waist. His dark brown pants were tucked into soft boots. A leather pauldron shielded his left shoulder. His burgundy cloak, designed to fit over his right shoulder, lay on the bar, casually discarded.
He was thirty years old but looked about five years younger. Solentine Dagarra. The head of the Shears and bastard son of Trihorn Border Margrave Izarn Demarr. Ruthless, dangerous, and deeply paranoid. He was one of my favorite characters. So handsome, so smart, so witty, and yet so deeply fucked up.
Solentine met my gaze.
Wow.
The Rise of Kair Toren had more viewpoint characters than you could shake a stick at, but Solentine was definitely near the top when it came to sheer page numbers, because he delivered both drama and shocking violence. Most people had a circuit breaker that tripped and stopped them because some things were simply not done to fellow human beings. In some people, it malfunctioned, but in Solentine it was either permanently broken or didn’t get installed in the first place. He was infinitely dangerous, and right now he was looking at me like I was an annoying bug he needed to crush.
It sank in: This wasn’t fiction. This was my reality. I was standing in a soundproof room, the servant behind me was likely a trained killer, and I was looking at Solentine Dagarra. In the flesh. I could reach out and boop him on the nose.
Oh god, he would kill me.
Solentine smiled at me. Alarm punched the base of my neck and rolled down my spine in an electric shock. Oh no, that wasn’t good. Not at all. Dying at the hands of the Shears would hurt.
Coming here had been a terrible mistake.
Mistake or not, now I had to survive. I needed to establish my credentials and show I wasn’t afraid. But I was afraid. Very afraid.
I forced the words out. “The head of the Shears. I’m honored.”
“Tell me how you know our password, and I’ll decide what to do with you,” Solentine said in a cultured baritone. Even his voice was off the charts.
“I don’t give away information, I sell it. Right now, I have something you want, so I came here to trade. You’re missing one of your men.”
There was a barely perceptible shift in the way Solentine held himself. A little less relaxation in the line of his shoulders, a little more rigidity in the spine, a harder edge to his gaze. I had his undivided attention.
“I can make you tell me everything you know,” he said. “It won’t be difficult.”
“True. However, if you do that, the Shears will never again profit from my services. I’d like to establish a mutually beneficial business relationship, so I’m willing to make certain concessions. I’ll tell you what happened to Miro, no strings attached. In a week, I’ll come back for my payment. If I like the value you put on saving a life, we can make a deal again in the future. If I don’t, this will be our first and last transaction.”
It was a huge gamble, but Solentine suspected everyone and everything. A week would give him enough time to check out the information I offered him. The delayed payment guaranteed I would stick around, which should make him comfortable enough to let me walk out of here unharmed.
A stupid leg-breaker would torture the information out of me and then kill me. Solentine was a very smart man. He would want to use this week to have me watched and to try to find out everything he could about me. Who sent me? Where did I come from? Did I have a secret agenda? Could I prove to be useful in the future? So many fun questions that would gnaw at his brain.
And if I played my cards right, down the line, he might trust me enough to not only pay me but provide me with a false identity. It would take a lot of work, but it was possible.
He pondered me for a long moment.
My skin felt too tight. I had a powerful urge to scream and run away as fast as I could just to ease the pressure.
Come on. Let the curiosity win.
“Where is he?”
Got him. “He broke into Baron Horost’s estate and was caught. They have him in the dungeon, last cell on the right as you enter.”
The Shears had started a century ago as a crime syndicate specializing in espionage, sabotage, and rumors. Solentine had taken them over eight years ago and continued the policies of his predecessor, forging the former syndicate into a shadow army of informants, thieves, and assassins. The Shears embedded capable and well-trained people all throughout Rellas. They were the tailors, the chefs, the barbers, the embroidery maids. Some simply gathered information and passed it on. Others ran around the rooftops in black outfits, broke into impregnable fortresses, and stabbed people in the back when the occasion demanded.
