“I have to say,” Mylaf said, adjusting her collar, “I am absolutely thrilled to be coming ‘undercover’ with you, sir. Thrilled. Tonight has been the most fun I’ve had in years!”

  “Yeah, well,” Lowe said, glancing over his shoulder, “it turns out I’ve already got everyone else I care about kidnapped by a serial criminal. It meant I was kind of thin on the ground for spare hands to bring to the party.”

  “Yep. Sure, Absolutely no offence taken, Jana,” Rook said. “I’m pleased to interrupt my very busy day of Threshold Guarding to come to your assistance. You’re very, very welcome.”

  “You know,” Latham rumbled from up ahead, “if we’re all hoping to go the same way as the Mayor, we’re doing a pretty fucking good job of drawing all sorts of attention to ourselves.”

  The four of them moved through the undercity which threaded beneath Soar’s tangle of passageways, scaffolds, and narrow alleys. The air down here stunk—mostly of old rain and alleyway piss—but this evening it was cut through by the acrid sting of burnt wood and scorched stone. The residue of the explosion had torn through City Hall’s top floor.

  “And considering the Black Knight is back blowing up important people, how about we all shut the fuck up and keep moving?” Latham finished.

  Lowe, for once, was keeping his mouth shut. He’d never been a fan of spending much time in the undercity of Soar. He found the city above enough of nightmare as it was already. And the world beneath it? That was something else entirely.

  The undercity was Soar’s shadow. A reflection twisted by everything the world above cast aside. What the streets above discarded—bodies, secrets, grudges—the undercity swallowed whole. It was where debts were paid in flesh, where whispers carried farther than screams, and where the city above pressed down, squeezing life into something mean and desperate.

  But there was no denying if you wanted to get somewhere quickly and unseen, travelling via the undercity was the way to achieve it. Still, Lowe was pretty glad they had Latham with them right now.

  “Although, I must say, as fun as this excursion is, I do hate the quiet,” Mylaf said “It’s unnatural.”

  “Enjoy it while you can. It won’t last,” Lowe said. “It never does.”

  They turned a corner and nearly ran straight into a Justicar patrol sweeping through the street. Latham threw out an arm to stop them, pressing them back against the damp brickwork of a half-collapsed warehouse. All of the Justicars they’d come across this evening were being arseholes, but there was an edge to them now as they rousted people off the street.

  “Fuck,” Rook said, ducking more than usually into the shadows. “They’re pulling everyone out for this.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Although, considering someone - no one was saying the Black Knight yet, but that’s what everyone was thinking - had tried to whack the Mayor, it was hardly surprising the various militias in Soar were losing their shit.

  From the increasingly frenzied calls for him to fucking answer your Sending Stone, Lowe knew Cuckoo House had hit the streets in full force. He felt bad for not answering, but if he did, he was sure whatever tracking spell Staffen had put on him would trigger again. And he didn’t want that anyone knowing where he was until his plan was in place. He liked Staffen and was about as sure as he could be that she wasn’t nefariously involved in all this but . . . well, the only way two people could keep a secret was if one of them was dead.

  And, perhaps, not even then.

  However, the Soar Security Service weren’t the only ones out and about since someone had taken their shot. The Justicars were out in their gold and black coats crisp despite the late-night drizzle. The Temple Warders were likewise making their presence known in places they normally didn’t deign to walk and even the Dungeon Keepers, the city’s most reclusive and least cooperative enforcers, had stepped into the light.

  The Mayor’s office had been hit and Soar did not know what to do with itself. It had been years—decades even—since Lowe thought Soar had last seen this level of unrest.

  The Mayor’s tenure had been so long that most people had simply stopped questioning it. Come what may, he had been a constant. An institution in and of himself. Something as unmovable as the stones the city had been built upon. And now, suddenly, that status quo had been nearly upended.

  The Tower of Law had summoned an emergency session, pulling every available Council member into conclave to decide how the city would move forward. Normally, such sessions would have been a quiet, bureaucratic affair, held behind heavy doors and thick curtains, but there would be no hiding this from the public. If the Mayor died - and no one Lowe had heard from actually knew the current status of the man - the Council needed to have a plan in place.

  And, while they deliberated, everyone was watching.

  On the streets, the people gathered in uncertain clumps, eyes flicking toward City Hall, where the smouldering ruins of the Mayor’s office still cast an eerie glow against the skyline. Some whispered of conspiracy. Others of retribution. But all of them understood one thing—if the Mayor didn’t pull through, shit was going to get real.

  And, considering this was Soar, who knew what that might mean.

  For now, Cuckoo House was locking down the poor quarters of the city, reinforcing checkpoints, and deploying squads to all major intersections. Lowe didn’t envy his colleagues that task. If there was one thing you didn’t want to be doing when civil unrest raised its head, was standing in a thin line between the mob and where they wanted to go.

  The Justicars, on the other hand, seemed to have lucked out and had been given charge of the higher districts, ensuring that whatever power struggle came next, it wouldn’t get anywhere near an expensive post code- which was just how the people in Jewel Town would like it. The Temple Warders were making themselves known in the markets and the industrial quarters, reminding everyone that divine authority still mattered and that the gods were always watching.

  And the Dungeon Keepers? Fuck knows what they were up to, but they were silently watching in a way that was terrifying pretty much everyone.

  It felt like there was a storm coming. But, right now, everyone in Soar was holding their breath.

  Well, most people.

  “Are you absolutely sure we’re allowed to be walking around like this?” Mylaf whispered, ducking between Latham and Rook as they paused, once again, in an alley as a patrol moved by. “Those uniformed gentlemen seem very keen for us to be moving indoors.” She wiped her hands on her coat and adjusted the dozen or so vials hooked onto the bandolier under her cloak. The glass clinked, and they all, instinctively, winced.

  “Yeah, well,” Latham said, checking the street ahead before motioning them forward, “everyone is very keen for me to be at my post at the Temple, but apparently we’re not at home to doing what we’re told this evening.”

  They kept moving quickly, slipping from shadow to shadow, their steps unnaturally light thanks to the Legendary Stealth potion coursing through their veins. Thanks to one of Mylaf’s more exotic creations, their bodies were moving faster and quieter than they had any right to, with their every movement sharpened to a razor’s edge. It made even Lowe, who was usually about as subtle as a bar brawl when creeping about, move with something that approached a predatory grace.

  Although extremely powerful, the downside of these particular Stealth potions was that their effects really did not last all that long. This was why Lowe had asked if the Drudge would accompany them as even stored in an inventory, they’d burn out well before they could be used. And using them too often would trigger a fairly awful debuff. Thus, she was with them to make sure neither of those disasters happened.

  Speaking of which, whe slipped a piece of gingerbread from her inventory and shoved it into Lowe’s hand. “Eat.”

  “Again?”

  “Eat it. You’re Overjuicing again. I can tell. Your hands are shaking.”

  Lowe shoved the gingerbread into his mouth without argument. The Overjuiced debuff turned all the benefits of the Stealth potion into a liability real fast. If he let it kick in his eyesight would become too sharp, his nerves too frayed and his muscles would react too fast to obey his brain’s orders. Even a man like Lowe with all of his healing ability would very quickly turn into mush.

  “You two as well,” Mylaf tossed Rook and Latham their own slices of cake before downing another vial of Stealth herself. The sensation of power was immediate—like stepping into a stronger, faster version of herself.

  Rook was chewing slowly. “I have to say, I fucking hate this stuff.”

  “It tastes wonderful!” Latham said.

  “Not if you don’t have functioning tastebuds, I’m afraid. As it is, it’s like having wallpaper paste in my mouth.”

  “Still better it’s much better than getting caught sneaking into the Tower of Law,” Mylaf said brightly. “And infinitely preferable to your individual body parts liquifying due to Overjuicing.”

  “If we’ve all finished moaning, we need to move,” Lowe said.

  The entrance ahead of them to the Tower of Law was , unsurprisingly locked down tight—patrols moving like clockwork around the perimeter. From where they were, they could see Justicars watching the main doors and a bunch of Temple Warders amongst them keeping an eye on the mana signatures of anyone with a dangerous Class trying to slip past. Considering those two groups absolutely hated each other, there was an unwelcome added frisson in the air.

  Interestingly, though, no group appeared to be overly concerned with the lower service doors.

  The trick though, of course, was going to be getting to them.

  They waited, listening to the rhythm of the patrols. Footsteps passed, growing fainter. Latham clicked his fingers once. That was the signal to take another potion. And to move.

  The first hurdle was a locked grate covering a drain tunnel beneath the outer wall. Nothing flashy, nothing clever of using any sort of mana rune. It was just an old-fashioned, iron-barred obstruction. Lowe pulled out a pair of wire cutters and went to work. “Tell me,” Mylaf said, “should I be concerned that a member of the Security Service is quite so au fair with breaking and entering?”

  “You think this is bad,” Rook said, “you should see him in the canteen dinner queue.”

  “I would really love it if everyone could stop it with the ‘Lowe is getting fat’ gags, please,” he said, pulling the grate free for them to slip inside.

  Moving as fast as Stealth allowed them, they moved into the undercroft—old storage tunnels used for maintenance and waste disposal from the Tower of Law above. They moved quickly - obviously - weaving through the tunnels and dodging the occasional guard on maintenance duty. Mylaf kept her potion vials handy and passed them out just before the last one began to wear off. Even down here, Lowe had drilled it into them that all sorts of alarms would trigger should that protection drop off. And this plan absolutely needed them to arrive in the Tower of Law unseen.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Before long they reached an iron hatch that, according to the blueprint Latham had scared up, would lead to service stairway to the roof of the building. Rook pressed his ear against it, listening, then turned to whisper ‘two of them’. He motioned to Latham, who nodded, flexed his fingers and positioned himself on the opposite side of the hatch.

  Lowe held up three fingers. Two. One.

  The hatch burst open as Latham surged through it. Literally. The others followed through the Latham-shaped hole he punched in the wall. The guards - common-or-garden City Watch - had just enough time to look surprised before he grabbed one and slammed him into the wall. Rook followed through the gap, striking the second guard with a blow to the face which knocked them out cold.

  “I have to say,” Mylaf tutted, “I do think it is a little unfair on these poor gentlemen to be pounced on in such a fashion. They were only doing their job after all.”

  Lowe dragged them back into the undercroft, stripped them of their security tags, and stuffed them into a storage closet. “If it makes you feel any better for their discomfort,” he said, “we’re all absolutely in execution territory right now.”

  Surprisingly, no one seemed to think that made them feel any better.

  They continued to climb higher up the Tower of Law. With every step they took, they could feel the tension around the building rising. The attempted assassination might have sent shockwaves through Soar, but that was nothing compared to the frenzy of activity since it had taken place. Guards were tripled, security runes were burning hot, and - they’d heard whispered as they snuck past - the entire Council was in an emergency session in a chamber at the very peak of the Tower, no doubt trying to figure out which of them was the person whose appointment, should the worse happen, would keep the whole damn city from tearing itself apart.

  Under the influence of as much Stealth as they could throw down their throats, they moved through corridors, slipping past the increasingly sparse and scattered patrols.

  “Funny,” Rook said, “it’s all a bit like bees, isn’t it?”

  “Like what?” Latham said.

  “Bees will die for the hive,” Rook went on. “But only at the entrance. The workers fight at the threshold, throw themselves at anything they think is a threat. But once you're inside? Walk carefully, move slowly, and they let you be. The instinct to attack stops. They don’t know what to do with an intruder who doesn’t act like one.”

  They climbed another flight of steps, passing through a corridor of draped silks and polished marble, walls carved with suitably lawyery reliefs. There were still no alarms about their presence. No hurried steps following them.

  “It’s like the higher we go, the less they notice,” Rook said. “It’s why when reach into a hive with your bare hands to lift out the queen, no one will stop you.”

  “When the fuck did you start keeping bees?” Lowe said, munching down on another piece of the gingerbread.

  “It’s very soothing,” Rook said. “You’d be surprised at all sorts of the things I’ve had to pick up recently.”

  Then, abruptly, they had reached the door to the roof of the Tower of Law. It had all been much easier than it should have been, Lowe thought. There’d not even been any sentries at the last stairwell. And now they were here, and the final part of his plan was ready to put into action.

  Lowe had been up here before. Not like this, of course. Not with his breath held and his pulse a steady drumming beat in his ears, but on days when the city had been nothing more than a teeming sprawl of ants beneath him. He and Arebella had countless stolen moments here over the years, snatching a kiss or two on a roof that looked out over all of Soar, the wind catching at her hair, laughter muffled against his collar.

  By the look of the blitz sticks crushed underfoot, they weren’t the only ones who made use of the place. This place was obviously a smoker’s retreat between duties, somewhere those who worked within the Tower of Law came to step outside of themselves for a moment. To let their thoughts dissolve into the sky.

  The door at the top of these stairs was plain and unmarked. No crest, no lock and no heavy iron bolt to bar their way. It clearly wasn’t meant to keep anyone out. It was just a door to be used only by those who belonged here. By those who never imagined an intruder might reach it.

  Lowe glanced at the rest of his group. None of them spoke.

  Beyond the door, the wind would be waiting, the cold air rolling around under a vast open sky. However, most importantly, it would also afford them a view that stretched down into the glass-domed Council Chambers, where a very tense meeting was currently going on.

  Lowe set a hand to the latch and pushed it open. No alarm. The hive had not stirred.

  “Remind me again why we think this is a good idea,” Latham said.

  “Never said it was a good idea,” Lowe said. “I just said that, if I were the Black Knight, having just tried to take out the Mayor, the absolute next place I’d be heading to would be here. The last time he was active, the Council made a resolution to never meet together to avoid giving him a ‘target rich environment.’ I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this is the last time they allow themselves to be in one room again before he is caught. If the Black Knight wants to up the ante - maybe finish off what he started way back when - it is going to have to be now or never. So, we go out there, get ready and when he shows up here we, you know, take care of business.”

  They stepped out onto the roof.

  The wind howled about them, tearing at their cloaks, dragging at every loose thread like it meant to unmake them. If Lowe didn’t know better, he’d say that Hel was out and about and feeling very annoyed about life. Thinking of his friend made Lowe unaccountably sad, and he pushed that from his mind.

  From this position up high, they were looking down at the glass dome above where the Council were sitting in their gilded chairs, draped in all sorts of self-importance. Lowe didn’t think there were any raised voices—not yet—but the tension in there was clear. Someone had taken a shot at the Mayor and none of them were sure what that meant for them.

  At the very centre of the room, a great table sprawled beneath a mess of parchment. Lowe thought he could make out maps curled at the edges, documents held down by ornate seal-stones and, of course, Sending Stones buzzing repeatedly like dying embers. Each one of those was carrying a message from somewhere in Soar, another piece of bad news laid at their feet. Lowe was getting fed much the same info on his own device: reports of all sorts of unrest and riots.

  Not once did any of them look up. Lowe supposed there was no reason for any of them to do so.

  Lowe’s fingers curled against a rail that kept him from approaching too near the edge. He had no love for that place down below. The last time he had stood in their, it had been when they had voted, unanimously, to Classtrate him. To strip him of most of his Skills, and sever him from everything that made him useful to the world.

  That was the kind of people they were. And, not for the first time, he wondered if the Black Knight might not have had the right of it when he did his best to wipe these fuckers out. Wouldn’t Soar just be better off if he just sat back and let things take their natural course over the next bell or so . . .

  But then he thought of a small, broken body in a deserted warehouse and, as far as he was concerned, that way of thinking could fuck right off. Any end like that could never justify the means.

  Nevertheless, Lowe could still see each and everyone of their faces in his mind. The way they had looked at him. Not with hatred. Not even with cruelty. But with such a weight of disdain. He had been a disappointment, and they had simply voted to throw him and everything he had been away. And now there they were beneath him, draped in their robes of power, gnawing at their own fear like rats on a ship that was both sinking and on fire.

  As a group, they set themselves up on the roof, each hidden in the deep shadows and eyes scanning the surrounding space for any sign of the Black Knight’s incursion.

  “And now what?” Mylaf whispered from her position on the extreme left of the Tower’s roof.

  “Now?” Lowe said, looking down through the glass dome where his Perception revealed an empty chair, its owner very conspicuously absent from proceedings. “Now you get to be introduced to the little known, but most common aspect of the work of Cuckoo House. We’re going to sit still, probably for a couple of bells, and wait for the real action to start.”

  ***

  The Black Knight didn’t like leaving anything to chance. He never had.

  That was how lesser men died, after all. Those poor fools never took the time to plan properly. They just acted and trusted to luck, blithely assuming Soar had a sense of fairness. ‘Remember the six Ps,’ the Boss had always said. Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. The Black Knight had made it this far because he did not trust in anything else other than his own competence.

  Certainty was to be found in the little details. The way a guard’s patrol route could be measured to the precise second. The exact weight of a coin pouch so that it secured a man’s loyalty. And, of course, both the silence that fell before a kill and the awful quiet that appeared right after.

  Those two were the key to knowing when to strike and, far more importantly, when to wait.

  So, right now, he was waiting.

  The emergency Council session was dragging on and on deep into the night. From everything he had been able to ascertain, the city outside the walls of the Tower of Law was still in complete shock, its heart stuttering from the sudden, violent attack on the Mayor. Good. That was, after all, the whole point. Of course, he’d never had any expectation that his assault would actually be able to kill the man - from that range, and with the Mayor in his own office, his defensive Skills would have far too extensive for that - but that had not been his aim. The Black Knight knew that, should he seek to get all these important men and women in one room, that attack would be the only way.

  And now here there were. At his complete mercy.

  Although, things had almost gone wrong once he had kicked that particular hornet’s nest. The speed in which the Justicars had locked the Tower of Law down had taken him by surprise. He had expected to have been able to be in position before that had happened but - fortunately - he had prepared for that eventuality and had been able to use his trump card to assist him in slipping inside. And now here he was, hidden from sight, and making little adjustment to his crossbow, all the time being careful that the other hidden watchers on this roof did not notice him.

  The Black Knight took his time, adjusting things until he was in the perfect position for this final shot. He rested the lip of his weapon over the edge of the roof so that the weight was supported by the stone. He loved this crossbow. It was an executioner’s tool, created and given to him for a single purpose. Each of his bolts was powered to cut through any and all defensive Skills and protections and the one he had one loaded up for this final, dramatic shot was one which would engulf the entire Chamber below in a colossal, demon-infused fireball.

  All that remained was to wait until the star of this particular show to arrive.

  Then, even as he watched, the door to the Council chamber swung open, and the Mayor hobbled in.

  The man moved like someone who’d been hurt badly and didn’t trust any of his wounds to stay closed. Interesting, the Black Knight thought, he’d seemingly hit closer to the mark than he thought! The Mayor’s grip on his cane was white-knuckled, and the muscle at his jaw twitched like he was holding back either pain or rage. Probably both. But that was to nothing compared to the paranoia which rolled off him in waves. The rest of the Council visibly shrank from it, their whispers thinning into silence.

  Everyone within that room was profoundly rattled and, perhaps, for the first time in a long time, the Black Knight was truly pleased.

  The Council members had all stood at the Mayor’s arrival, bowing their heads low. The Black Knight almost smiled at them presenting the perfect target. Almost. Then, he shifted his grip on the crossbow and prepared to kill them all.

  It was funny, but he hadn’t accepted a contract in over a year. There hadn’t really been any point. Having stolen away the Highberg ransom, he’d been set up for life. But it had never been about the gold, had it. And it hadn’t been about the politics, or the pursuit of power. Or even the settling of personal grudges. He had spent all that time cutting away the dead wood at the summit of Soar, but in the end he had grown to realise that, despite everything he had done to improve things, Soar remained no different. And, with regret, he had come to recognise that the Mayor and the Council were the reason for that.

  Whilst it might seem gauche to be about to bite off the hand that had so well remunerated him for services rendered, the Black Knight was settled on this course of action. The Mayor and the Council must die if Soar was to survive. He had hoped that Arkola would move immediately against the Mayor and the Warden once the Vault was plundered of its booty, but that had not come to pass.

  On reflection, perhaps, he should have known better about that. He had, after all, played that particular card once before, hadn’t he? When he had originally delivered that strange statue to the Mayor. His expectation had been that, in short order, Arkola would immediate turn City Hall into an ash heap. But instead, there had been negotiation. Compromise. And the Mayor had continued to be in power.

  It just showed, didn’t it, that you couldn’t trust anyone in this city.

  A lesson he seemed to have needed to learn again and again.

  However, now he was here - looking down on all those important, serious people - he was actually quite glad how everything had worked out. There was nothing quite like being able to bring the game to a conclusion yourself, up close, was there? To pull the curtain down on the whole performance with one big boom.

  With all of these greybeards gone, Soar would finally be open to new arrangements. New balances of power would rise and the next pieces would be ready to be moved.

  It was time.

  The Black Knight took a final check of his aim, breathed in, and held it, focusing on the empty chair at the table below. The chair that belonged to Soar’s ruler. The one to which he was moving, painfully, towards. It would be fitting for the Mayor to be the first to die. After which, there would be no shortage of souls meeting their gods.

  The power of the crossbolt thrummed beneath his fingers.

  And he waited.

  Waited for just the right moment.

  Waited for the weight of certainty to settle.

  Because the Black Knight didn’t like leaving anything to chance.

  He never had.

  Then, without any warning at all, he felt the cold touch of metal resting against the back of his neck.“

  Well fuck me, little man. Who would have guessed it? Like a stopped clock, you’ve actually been right twice today!”

  If the first voice was wryly amused, then the second one to speak was cold as ice.

  “Okay Rook, I think it's about time you put the crossbow down.”