Only Villains Do That

Shepherding two unwilling recruits who were only along because they were terrified of me obviously required a great deal of my attention, which spared me the opportunity to get too lost in my own thoughts, but even so, I had plenty of time to worry as we made our careful, stealthy way through the back alleys of the Gutters. Much of that energy I spent wondering what the hell was going on with Aster and why Biribo hadn’t come to report yet. Surely he’d let me know right away if some disaster had befallen, right? So no news must be good news.

Obviously that didn’t stop me from worrying.

There was also my old standby: dwelling on just how deeply and how badly all this violence was affecting me. I was long past being bothered by how unbothered I was by it all. I’d been wondering just how far down that spiral went, i.e. would I find myself bothered by how unbothered by how unbothered…and so on. But no, it turned out there was a floor to that and at some point I’d reached it. I’d just tortured a man with fire until he complied with my orders, and I hadn’t really felt anything about it except annoyance at how long it was taking. So, that was that.

Christ, I’d only been here a couple of months.

“That’s it,” said Lamm, pointing at the vista before us.

Our current perch actually provided a pretty good view; shame it was just of one of the more dilapidated sections of the Gutters, but you couldn’t have everything. Not trusting either of my companions to be anywhere near Lady Gray, I had directed Lamm to take us to a spot with altitude from which I could see the planned ambush site, but not within shouting range. The structure we’d climbed was not unoccupied, but was quiet at this hour and had a handy set of exterior stairs by which we could get to the roof without having to go through the inhabited rooms. Before us stretched one of those half-ruined areas that seemed to mark a good quarter of the outskirts of Gwyllthean. The city had lost enough population and economic activity over the last ten years that a sizable chunk of its fringes were abandoned. Nobody I’d asked could point to a specific explanation for this, except for Clan Aelthwyn’s generally incompetent governance.

“Mm, good place for a hideout,” I said, examining the cluster of three old warehouses with boarded windows, arranged in a cul-de-sac whose inner courtyard faced to the south, its entrance blocked from our view. “Does she do a lot of business out of there?”

“It’s not a hideout, just the spot Lady Gray chose for this particular ambush,” said Lamm, his voice tense as usual. I couldn’t fault the guy for being on tenterhooks around me, after all. In this case, I could see his point. Perfect ambush spot; hide your forces inside the warehouses and you could instantly flank anyone dumb enough to wander into the courtyard. Which, obviously, I was not going to do.

“Is she there?”

“Originally, yes. The plan was for her to lurk behind the Blessed she gathered, let them soften you up, then finish you off.” He glanced at me again, still with the same well-contained fear, but also curiosity peeking through. I knew Gray had deliberately not explained to her people who or what I was that required so much effort; obviously he would wonder. “That was before she got word about the Auldmaer Company wagons going out the way they were. She had to leave the ambush to coordinate a response and stop the rest of her gangs from picking them over.”

Which I would have no way of verifying until it was too late, so I’d better assume he was lying. Why had I even asked, then? Okay, so, proceed on the presumption that Lady Gray was present and hope my inexperience wasn’t too glaringly obvious to these guys. That would help shape the determination of my next move.

“Any captives?”

Lamm shook his head. “Too complicated. I wasn’t part of the teams sent to pressure you into the trap, so I dunno what the deal was with that. They either got somebody or were pretending to, I dunno.”

Again, probably lying. I turned to the third member of our little party, who had just gotten his breath back from the climb. To be fair to Aefryd, he was in full armor, which couldn’t have been great for ascending three flights of stairs. Besides, I was just gratified not to be the most out of shape leg of the tripod. It had been a rough two months, but all that labor had had its benefits.

“You familiar with this spot, Aefyrd?”

“Sure,” he said with the faintest hint of a wheeze. “Been there a few times. Popular spot for shady shit.”

“Been there busting up the shady shit, or participating?”

“Uhh…yeah?”

That was the Gwyllthean city guard for you.

“Okay, then.” The artifact rapier’s enchantment activated as soon as I touched the handle, enabling me to draw it in the smooth, lightning-fast and precise motion of a master swordsman; Lamm tried to shy away, but he only succeeded in removing himself from the range at which he could have struck back at me, remaining well within the long reach of the rapier. I brought the tip to rest against his throat. “I guess this means I don’t need you anymore.”

Lamm had frozen the instant the blade touched his neck. Now, he inhaled sharply, but did nothing else. He didn’t even try to argue, just staring at me with his hands half-raised at his sides as if to reach for weapons he now didn’t dare. I held the sword there, and held his gaze. His expression was… Oddly detached. Anticipatory, but he seemed more resigned than afraid.

And why not? With the kind of life this guy had led, he knew what happened to people like him as soon as they became more of a risk than a utility. He’d probably seen this coming, and been playing along in the hope of somehow turning the situation around before it got to this point. Now, there was nothing left for him to do. I had the tip of the blade right against the side of his throat. One flick of my wrist and it would tear through the carotid artery, jugular vein and windpipe. There would be no coming back from that, not when the only person who could Heal it was the one killing him.

I stared into the eyes of the man I was about to murder and found a weary void of feeling where my conscience was supposed to be. He was in my way, that was all. It’d have been nice if I could recruit him like the bandits back at North Watch, but the situation was too unstable and he too untrustworthy. It couldn’t be risked. This was just…strategy. A pragmatic necessity. Lamm was probably just like Donon or Twigs, someone who’d fallen into a life of crime because the society around him was disintegrating too fast to offer him anything normal. I’d have offered him my hand if I could, I just couldn’t risk it this time. I stared at him and felt nothing.

So why was I hesitating? A long span of seconds had ticked by already. If anything, drawing it out like this was needlessly cruel.

After all, where did I even get off questioning the violence at this point? I was no better than any of these people, and worse than a lot. I didn’t actually know how many human lives I had deliberately ended, because most of them had been during the chaos of battle. I knew I had laughed at and mocked at least several of them. I suspected my kill count rivaled most of Japan’s serial killers from the modern era, and probably that of quite a few Warring States-era samurai. I was well past having any right to maunder about this. Hell, I had callously tortured this very man minutes ago.

Besides, this guy’s hands were probably even bloodier than mine. Of all people, he didn’t deserve mercy.

Which, of course, was not the point.

Whenever you can, be kind.

God dammit, Aster. She had better be all right.

I lowered the sword. Lamm inhaled deeply; I realized it was the first breath he’d taken since that sharp one when I’d put the blade to his neck.

“I believe in fairness, Lamm,” I said. “I realize you don’t see a lot of that in Fflyr Dlemathlys, so I’m instituting it. The fact is, I owe you one. No, scratch that—two. You’ve helped me out significantly tonight, and before that there was…you know. With all the burning and screaming.”

“Yeah, I remember that part,” he said, still tense. He hadn’t tried to move, which was smart considering his vulnerable neck was still within rapier range and I had shifted the blade to point at his midsection from a few centimeters away, not lowered it to my side. One swift lunge and he was still a goner.

“You won’t forget that anytime soon,” I agreed. “If it makes you feel better, I get nightmares too. Life’s like that, at least on this shithole world. So, I owe you two, and here they are. First, your life.”

“Appreciate that, Lord Seiji,” he said with a jerky nod.

I nodded back, more smoothly. “And second, some free advice. Lady Gray is over. Understand? Done. It’s impressive that she spotted part of the plan and moved to intervene, but let’s face it: she doesn’t still have the organizational capacity or sheer manpower to stop all those wagons from being looted in her name. Maybe most, but not all. And that wasn’t even the whole plan. You may not know what she sent to get my attention in the middle ring, but I do, and I’ve already tied that up with a neat little bow. The fact that it happened in the middle ring is the linchpin. By this time tomorrow, she will be at the top of Clan Aelthwyn’s shit list. This time next week, and Clan Olumnach will be picking over what’s left of her bones. Even if I fail to wipe out her Blessed squad tonight, it’s over.”

“So I should sign on with you instead, that’s what you’re saying?”

“I believe I’ve already pointed out that I have no more use for you,” I replied with a lazy smile. “At least for tonight. No offense, but I don’t think I’m quite ready to trust you at my back.”

“None taken.” He actually managed the ghost of a smile himself.

“So here’s your advice, in thanks for your help. Go to the guard headquarters, tell them Lord Seiji sent you to talk to Captain Norovena. Tell him you helped me, and then tell him everything you know that even might help him round up and finish off Lady Gray. Next time I see him, I’ll ask if you did, and if he’s got you in custody I’ll vouch for you. In fact, I’ll pay to get you out of a cell if that’s what it takes, though by then he’ll be in such a good mood after finally getting to nail Gray that it likely won’t come to that. So those are your options, Lamm. Sit this one out, and you’ve got a chance to buy your way out of the hammer that’s about to come down on her whole organization. Or you can go back to her and be just another anonymous goon rounded up and put to the sword when the Kingsguard and combined Clansguards rampage through Gwyllthean starting tomorrow.”

Lamm continued to stare at me without moving, though his eyes narrowed slightly in concentration as he weighed his prospects.

“Of course, there’s option three,” I added. “Fuck off out of Gwyllthean entirely before the shit goes down. That’s what I’d be doing if I wasn’t already neck-deep in this business. It’s about to get ugly around here and between you and me, I’d just as soon miss it.”

His shoulders shifted slightly in a minute sigh and he opened his mouth to answer, but I overrode him again.

“That said, if I see you again tonight anywhere near the rest of Lady Gray’s operation, or looking like you’re heading in that direction, I’ll kill you. I promise, no bloody vengeance, nothing like what happened before; at this point I figure we’re square and you don’t owe me anything. But you’ve already seen all the hesitation out of me you ever will, Lamm. Cross me once more and you die. Clean and fast.”

Lamm nodded once. “I hear you, Lord Seiji. Thanks for…the advice. I’ll just…”

“You’re free to go,” I said with a magnanimous gesture of my sword when he tilted his head inquisitively toward the stairs. “Just be very careful which direction you go. Wander too near those warehouses or any of Gray’s local safehouses and I’ll assume the worst. I can very easily finish you from up here.”

“Right. Got it.” He folded down his hands at me, then turned and bolted down the stairs.

I moved at a more decorous pace to the edge of the roof and watched Lamm emerge from the alley below. He turned onto the street and made a beeline for the walls on the most direct route possible, a street that would take him right to the main avenue from which he could reach the gates. Those were closed at this hour, of course, but every gatehouse had guards posted all night, and with everything going on I suspected anyone on duty would know to contact Norovena if somebody showed up with a message like that.

Lamm turned to look back and up at me once as he fled. I gave him a jaunty salute with my sword; he ducked his head and resumed course. Moments later I lost sight of him behind a rooftop. Of course, he was more than capable of ducking down an alley and circling about to get up to who knew what mischief as soon as he was out of my line of sight. Given his years of loyalty to (and fear of) Lady Gray weighed against my own threats and offers, well, I could see that going either way. But I just didn’t have the luxury of riding herd on him any further, and if the rest of my business proceeded according to plan, it wouldn’t matter. Whether anything else would proceed according to plan was, of course, the eternal question.

Logically, I should’ve just killed him. But it was like Auldmaer said: a man had to live with himself.

“All righty then!” I said brightly, turning to Aefryd with a big smile.

He took a step back, eyes widening, and raised one gloved hand to cover the vulnerable gap where his breastplate didn’t cover the throat.

“Relax, Aefryd,” I said in my most condescending tone. “I already know you’re one of the good guys. See, you’ve got a uniform and everything.”

“Yes, Lord Seiji,” he said warily, smelling a rat but unable to pinpoint it. Not the brightest star in the firmament, was Aefryd.

“So! Down there in that trio of warehouses,” I pointed at the distant target with my sword, “a trap has been laid for yours truly. It is my intention to spring it when I am not in the middle of it. And that’s where you come in.”

“Oh no,” he whimpered.

Naturally, I allayed his fears with all the sympathy he deserved. “Oh, man up, you big baby. I know you’ve been on the take from Lady Gray’s organization. Aefryd, don’t waste my time,” I interjected as he started to protest. “I know it, you know it, Captain Norovena knows it, everybody knows. Don’t worry, I’m not here to litigate that. In fact, it’s exactly what makes you so useful to me right now, see? They know you, and they know what you’re all about. If you head down there and offer to sell them info on my whereabouts and plans, there’s no reason they won’t believe you. So what I want you to do is go down there and sell me out.”

“You want me,” he repeated very slowly, clearly laboring to parse this, “to…sell you out?”

“No reason you shouldn’t make a few halos out of all this fuckery, right?” I asked encouragingly, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’re going to go in there, tell them I ambushed Lamm and took him out, and lead them back to the spot where we left the Auldmaer Company cart. Tell them I stayed by it to wait for backup. That’ll lead them right past here, so I can hit the would-be ambushers from behind. Get it?”

“Ohhh.” His expression clearing, he nodded. “Yeah, I see what you mean, Lord Seiji. That’s a good plan!”

“Isn’t it? Now, time’s wasting, so get a move on.”

“Uh… What if—”

“Aefryd, we’ve been at this too long already. Don’t worry, you’ll do fine. Just get down there and tell them the story, get your payout, and skedaddle. Come tomorrow I’ll tell Captain Norovena how helpful you were and as far as you’re concerned, all this unpleasantness will be over with. Now move!”

Chivied along by my insistence, he scrambled down the stairs almost as fast as Lamm had. As before, I stayed up there to watch as he descended to ground level and turned to head in the opposite direction, toward the distant warehouse cluster. Aefryd paused twice to look back, and I gave him an encouraging wave each time.

As soon as an intervening building blocked the line of sight, I took off at a run, vaulting over the gap to the next roof and heading away from this spot as fast as I could, because I’m not an idiot.

A hypocrite, sure. After all my soul-searching over not killing Lamm, I had just blithely sent Aefryd to what might very well be his death.It made a difference, to my way of thinking, that not only was I not doing it with my own hands, but in fact I was only putting him in a risky position of exactly the kind that his own actions were undoubtedly going to accidentally engineer sooner or later.

The thing about Aefyrd was that he was as dumb as a bucket of goldfish. I’d known the man for half an hour and even I could tell that much. I gave it fifty-fifty odds whether he’d stick to the plan I’d laid out or try to actually sell me out with every real truth he knew, and even if he didn’t turn on me, it probably wasn’t going to go well. If I’d seriously wanted Aefyrd to repeat the story I told him, I’d have made him recite it at least three times first. Even if he followed the plan, he stood a very good chance of being found out. Yeah, one way or another, they were quite possibly going to kill him, but then again, Gray might have ordered them to be hands off with any city guards to mitigate the damage from the trap Auldmaer and I had laid.

I’d been serious about my offer, though; if Aefryd actually came through and they didn’t knife him or something, I fully intended to go to bat with his captain. If nothing else, a guy who was dumb and easily corruptible would be fantastically useful, and once I was running the crime on this island, it would serve me well to know which guards were exploitable.

Which was most of them, this being Fflyr Dlemathlys, but screw it. Given the danger I was putting him in, I owed Aefryd a break if he came through.

And so I circled around, bounding over the rooftops at a pace I wouldn’t even have considered without my Surestep Boots, with the intent of being as far as possible from the last location Aefryd could place me by the time he met with the ambushers in the warehouses.

Midway during this, the night started to look up even further.

“Boss!”

“Biribo!” I grinned as he zipped out of the darkness to hover over my shoulder in his customary place, but didn’t slow. There were still people soon to be after me, and by this point I was fit enough to parkour and talk. “It’s about time! How’d everything go? Is Aster okay?”

“Smooth as buttersauce, boss!” my familiar reported, zooming along with me. “We spotted the lookout watching you get that guy arrested, then followed him back to his base. It was a fuckin’ treasure trove! Lady Gray put together a whole operation with written notes on people connected to Cat Alley personnel she might be able to use to lean on you. Just, piles of evidence. We took so long cos there were other connected operations, and Aster wanted to wait and track them before busting up the central one. I thought it was a good call, and it’s a good thing cos the two other cells we tracked were actually doing kidnappings. They had three people between ‘em. Lady Gray was serious about baiting you, and you were right: she laid a network of one lead per possible target, so she could track and anticipate your movements based on what you did.”

“Excellent. Feels good to have all her careful planning turned against her for once. Are the captives all right?”

“Safe as babes in their cribs, boss. Norovena’s got them in custody, watched by men he actually trusts. I have no idea who any of ‘em are, by the way, they weren’t on Minifrit’s list nor mentioned by any of the Alley cats that I heard. Must’ve been connected to ‘em somehow, or Lady Gray wouldn’t have reached for ‘em.”

“It’s not news that she’s got a broader intelligence network than we do. What about Aster, is she okay?”

“Perfectly fine! She hit all three safehouses like a falling wall with a big-ass sword. No survivors among Gray’s personnel. But that suits the plan just fine—no need to have witnesses who might contradict our story. Right now Norovena’s going through the paperwork we collected, organizing it and doing a little massaging so it looks like the blackmail operation we want Clan Aelthwyn to react to. Aster’s there, waiting on you to come back.”

“Hot damn, I love it when things actually work out for once!”

“Yeah, no kidding. Speaking of, what’re we running away from?”

“Ah, this isn’t a retreat. Just a…repositioning.” In fact, I stopped, having arrived on another rooftop from which I had a clear view of the warehouse cluster some ten blocks away. For Biribo’s benefit I pointed at it. “That’s allegedly where the ambush was laid. I’ve sent a pawn to poke the trap, and then we’ll see what happens.”

“You wanna hit ‘em from behind when they move out, boss?”

“Well, that was my original intent, because I wasn’t willing to assume everything in the middle ring would go according to plan. No offense to you or Aster, it’s just…”

“No, I get it, boss. Don’t forget I’ve been along for this whole ride, too. That old bitch just keeps running circles around us.”

“Exactly. But if all that has actually succeeded, I think it’s smarter not to risk my own perky ass against anything Lady Gray cooked up specifically to kill me. If I just disappear and let the avalanche we’ve set in motion come down on her tomorrow, all her careful work down there is meaningless anyway. Since we’re at a safe enough distance, though, I do wanna see if I can get a look at what she’s laid out for me. And if a golden opportunity happens to present itself, well, I see no harm in taking out a few of her top people from a safe ambush of my own.”

“That ‘if’ is doin’ some heavy lifting, boss.”

“Yeah, we’ll call that a distant contingency. This is probably it for our part tonight, Biribo. Still, no harm in having a look.”

“Hell yeah, you’re talking to the living embodiment of information. Even if Gray gets the ax, we can only benefit by knowing who and what she considered a trump card for you. At least some of ‘em are likely to still be around after tomorrow.”

“Exactly. And speak of the devil!”

“Wait, devil?” He swooped about in apparent alarm. “Where?”

“It’s just an expression. Settle down, lemme get a look at this.”

I pulled Arider’s trusty spyglass from its padded case and aimed it at the edge of the warehouse cluster, where people were now emerging. Seven of them, I counted as they stepped warily into the open. All lowborn with the exception of one guy who wore a noble-style coat, though he wasn’t much paler than the rest and his hair was brown, not blond. No sign of Aefryd.

“Biribo, can you get anything on this group from this distance?”

“Focusing on ‘em, yeah. Not much detail from this far back, but they’re all Blessed with Magic.”

So, seven sorcerers to take me down? I was almost insulted; surely Lady Gray remembered how easily I’d torn through her hit squad of Blessed with Might. Then again, according to Lamm’s account she was planning to just use them to soften me up so she could deliver the coup de grace herself.

“Hang on, boss, something happening. That one’s casting—wait, I think that’s—”

One of the lowborn casters, a woman in a light tan longcoat with a red scarf, was indeed doing something. She held up both hands and through the spyglass I thought I saw her mouth open as she enunciated a spell. Around her a transparent sphere of blue-green light sprang up, and was quickly marked off by intersecting lines laid out like the latitude and longitude markings on a globe.

“Boss! We gotta move!”

And then one blinking point of light appeared on her globe, obscuring her expression as it was directly between me and her face, despite the long distance separating us. Almost as if it was pointing…at my location…

The sorceress turned her head to say something to her companions, pointing her finger right at us.

“Oh, bullshit,” I complained.