The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) (73 page)

On the other side of the hall, more food was prepared, this time in full view of everyone. Several large pigs were being roasted whole above fire pits, the smoke only seeming to add to the atmosphere as it wound its way through the enormous hall. Above them, high on the balcony that stretched around three sides of the hall, a large band – perhaps those from Pontaine would call it an orchestra, Lucius did not know – played quietly, its subdued tones of wind and wood draping themselves gently over the banquet below, enhancing the pleasure of the event without dominating it.

Straight across from the main entrance, sat de Sousse himself, flamboyantly dressed even for a Pontaine noble, no doubt enjoying his sudden rise to power and prominence with his victory in Turnitia, albeit won by deceit and good timing rather than force of arms. The baron and his closest allies sat on a raised dais, their table overflowing with the very best the kitchens could amass. A giant roasted elk dominated the table, with some rich golden fruit from Pontaine’s heartlands wedged firmly in its mouth. Cherries had been hung from its antlers and it was these that de Sousse was swiping by the handful as he reached across the table while animatedly describing some battle or tournament to the lords on his left.

Before them stretched a long line of supplicants, people of Turnitia who were looking for some favour, be it leniency for a crime committed, gold for investment or permission to start trading directly with the baron and Pontaine as a whole. For them, this audience was the whole point of the evening, not the rich banquet, and for many their whole lives could rest on the baron’s answer.

A young girl caught Lucius’ eye as she waved him over to a nearby table. With a freckled face framed by neat, dark hair that sank to her shoulders, she could not have been more than fourteen or fifteen years old. Dressed in a tight gown of pale blue satin, she looked like the innocent daughter of some lord or rich merchant who had finally been allowed to attend her first banquet.

Lucius knew better. As he approached, she grabbed the collar of a drunken man who had passed out on the table beside her and, with a heave, sent him toppling over the back of the bench to make room for Lucius.

Stepping over the sprawled man, who merely groaned and tried to crawl under the bench to escape the noise of the revelry before failing and slumping unconscious once again, Lucius sat down next to the girl and reached across the table to grab a half loaf of long, thin Pontaine bread.

“Grennar,” he said with a slight nod.

“You’re late.”

“Fashionably so, I hope.”

She cast a withering look at his cloak and the tough leather tunic underneath.

“Leave the fashion to me, Lucius. I am a much better study.”

That, he had to concede.

“How goes life for the beggars?”

Grennar shrugged. “Things change, things stay the same. Business booms ether way.”

“You are not finding things easier under Pontaine rule?”

“Oh, it is easier. But that doesn’t mean we are earning any more. Despite Vos’ best efforts, there were always loopholes and gaps in their policies. That is where the beggars flourish, regardless of who is in charge.”

She did not look like a beggar but, again, Lucius knew better. As young as she was, Grennar had learned from the best and had developed a self-confidence that far outweighed her years. Under her leadership, the beggars’ guild of Turnitia had expanded and grown, making life difficult if not outright impossible for those who did not join, and creating wealth for those who did. She was an invaluable ally to Lucius and his own guild, as the beggars were the eyes and ears of the city. What his thieves could not discover, the beggars surely would. Nine times out of ten, they had already obtained the information he sought before he asked. Beggars were all but invisible to cityfolk, and were rarely noticed as people went about their business or confided secrets to one another.

A round of polite applause rose from the other end of the hall as the Baron de Sousse stood to make a pronouncement. He directed his attention to the lead group of petitioners that lined up before his table and pointed at each one individually.

“Yes, yes, no, no, no, and yes,” he declared grandly, granting or denying the favours sought before hearing what they were. More than one of the petitioners looked as though they wanted to argue the point, but the baron’s attention was already fixed upon a troupe of scantily-clad Allantian dancers that had been ushered into the hall, and the thump of a spear’s butt from a nearby guardsmen served to dissuade any further dissent.

“That was quick,” Lucius said, frowning. “Erratic to the point of capricious.”

“Oh, no,” Grennar said with as much of a wolfish smile as a young teenage girl could muster. “I’ve been studying the good baron all evening.”

Lucius gave her a frank look. “Somehow, I think I should have guessed that.”

She thought for a moment before frowning herself.

“Yes,” she said. “You should. Anyway, our noble baron is a canny mark, and one worthy of some caution. See the servant that attends him now?”

Looking back up to the dais, Lucius saw the baron clapping and howling for more from the dancers, whose combination of thin silks and slow gymnastics had roused the interest of most of the men nearby – and not a few of the Pontaine women.

He almost missed the young man bringing another flagon of wine to the table. It was such a normal, casual act, especially here, in the hall of a Pontaine lord. As the servant leaned over the table, Lucius saw him whisper something, ever so briefly, to the baron, and a swift sleight of hand dropped a small parchment onto the table next to the flagon. Fascinated now, Lucius watched; as the baron continued to harangue the dancers, his eyes flickered to the parchment.

“You see it?” Grennar asked.

Lucius nodded slowly.

“He already knew what those witless fools wanted before they got into line,” Grennar said. “There has been a constant flow of information being passed to the baron, always by the servants, never the same one twice in a row.”

Even taking into account what he had seen, Lucius was more than prepared to believe Grennar on this point. The girl had a feel for the flow of information and how its transfer worked that made her truly gifted in her profession.

“So, we should be wary,” he said.

Grennar considered this. “Yes and no. Don’t give anything away that you don’t have to when we speak with the baron. He is sharp enough, and you can be sure that whatever he misses will be picked up by one of his own people. Don’t be surprised if we are interrupted by something that seems inconsequential – most likely, the baron will be getting a briefing on something we have just said.”

“Right,” Lucius said, beginning to wish he could delegate such meetings to someone else in his guild. He was skilled at planning, even better at executing a plan, but politics was never his strength. That brought another frown as he considered that, when it came to politicking, they young girl seated next to him was likely his master.

“But do not panic either,” Grennar said. “We more or less know what he wants – peace and prosperity, for both himself and the city as a whole. That makes him predictable. If the Triumvirate can guarantee no mess or trouble from our guilds and a continued flow of silver and gold, we will get what we want. Or, at least, what we need.”

Lucius had to smile at that. Ever since Vos had left Turnitia, Grennar had started referring to herself, Lucius and Adrianna as the Triumvirate, the true power behind the city. She controlled the beggars, and so controlled information. Lucius was guildmaster of the thieves, and so controlled vast amounts of wealth. For her part, Adrianna ruled the Shadowmages, which was a frightening enough prospect in itself given recent events, but through her guild she wielded power that Lucius and Grennar could not even begin to match.

Little happened in Turnitia’s underworld without the say of at least one of the guild leaders. Hence the term Triumvirate. Lucius was less sure that anyone else, de Sousse least of all, thought in quite the same terms, but the three of them were certainly a power bloc of sorts within the city and, thus, people who had to be listened to and, to a measure, respected.

Grennar had determined early on that the baron, who was now smearing warm butter over the naked thigh of one of the dancers he had called to his table, was a man they could do business with. That had never been the case with the Vos management, who had ever been the enemy of all three.

“Speaking of the Triumvirate, has our third member arrived yet?” Lucius asked.

Casting a look over her shoulder, Grennar shook her head. “Perhaps Adrianna is going for unfashionably late?”

“Speak my name and I shall appear,” a woman whispered behind them, a mischievous taint to her voice lending her fire-scarred face a dread quality.

Lucius glanced round and nodded a greeting to Adrianna and, with an apologetic look to the man next to him, shuffled along the bench to create room for her to sit. He saw Grennar narrow her eyes briefly, and he guessed why. The girl had looked behind them mere seconds before Adrianna had appeared, and had not seen the Shadowmage. Adrianna had seemed to materialise out of thin air, though whether it had been actual magic or simply a stealthy approach through the crowd, Lucius could not tell. Once, he had been able to sense the use of Adrianna’s magic, but those times had passed.

Once, he had called her Aidy, but it was now impossible to think of her in those old, familiar terms. This was now a very different woman sitting next to him, one utterly confident in her abilities which in themselves might well be boundless. She made him nervous and, though Grennar hid it, he knew Adrianna had a similar effect on the girl.

“We were wondering whether you would show up at all,” Grennar said, trying to cover her discomfort. Lucius had always felt that Grennar trusted him, as much as anyone could trust a thief, and considered him her equal. However, he also suspected that, around Adrianna, she felt more like the little teenage girl everyone else saw.

Adrianna beckoned and a tankard of wine skidded across the table into her waiting hand. She sipped at it and winced, the curse under her breath decrying all foul Pontaine wines.

“I was
summoned
,” she said pointedly, before glaring at Lucius. “Summoned. Me!”

Lucius meant to lay a hand on Adrianna’s arm to calm her fury, but stopped before his hand had travelled an inch. He briefly considered it was silly for him to think that she would burn him down with magic just for touching her. He also remembered that, in the past, he had touched far more of her than that, but instantly wiped the memory from his mind’s eye.

“I know we don’t need this baron,” Lucius began, “but we can perhaps make things easier for ourselves.”

He did not entirely believe this – many of the things he wanted out of this evening very much required the assent of the baron, but he had learned to talk to Adrianna in her own language, from her own perspective. It saved a great deal of argument and, after events in the recent past, Lucius was still very cautious in his dealings with Adrianna. Her energies seemed to be concentrated solely in gathering power for her guild of Shadowmages these days, but he never knew what might spark another explosion of her wrath. If that happened, the whole city might suffer.

Again.

“If a mere evening’s work means we can come to a suitable arrangement with the baron, then Grennar can get back to her beggars, me to the thieves and you can. . .” Lucius hesitated for a second, unsure of how to proceed.

Adrianna cocked an eyebrow at his delay and smiled with all the grace of a viper.

“What, Lucius?” she asked, the mischief coming back into her voice. Lucius wondered whether she had developed a natural cruel streak in recent months, or whether she viewed making him nervous as some sort of sport, or punishment. “I can get back to building the strongest and most powerful guild of mages this poor world has ever seen, perhaps? Start dredging up the oldest of magics and wrestle them under my command alone? Is that what you were going to say?”

“We’ve all got things we want, and they are things the baron can give to us with very little effort,” Lucius said, determined not to be drawn into whatever dark fantasy Adrianna was contemplating.

“He’s right,” said Grennar from the other side of Adrianna. “The baron is someone we can actually negotiate with.”

She stopped her explanation as Adrianna slowly turned to give her a withering glance of contempt. Grennar looked away, under the pretence of studying the baron further, but Lucius could sense how unsure she was around the older woman. Then again, Adrianna had that effect on most people she met.

Adrianna turned back to Lucius. “I will tell this baron what I am after, and he may request certain services of my guild. But this is not a negotiation, you understand that, Lucius? I do not negotiate. The baron wants what only my Shadowmages can provide. My price will be high and I will not be bartered down like some common trader. You remember that.”

Lucius nodded dutifully. “I will, Adrianna. I will.”

“And I trust you have not forgotten your training tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Make sure you are clear headed when you arrive,” Adrianna said as she sent her thoughts across the room to redirect a servant who was carrying a silvered plate of cold meats to the baron’s table. The boy looked momentarily confused, then trotted over to place the food in front of Adrianna.