Four years ago

  Extraction from the estate was easier than entry had been. After he collected the book from the cellar, Aelfredd made his way back out via the villa’s kitchen.

  He almost forgot about the guard he had avoided on the way in, remembering only when he heard the poor man’s loud breathing as he approached the top of the cellar stairs. When Aelfredd had passed through the first time, he had been relieving himself in a nearby chamber, but now he was dutifully guarding the exterior door. Which left his back exposed to Aelfredd as he carefully and quietly opened the door from the cellar into the kitchen.

  “You’re lucky. I’ve had enough killing for tonight,” Aelfredd whispered to himself again as he crept up on the man, drawing a dagger coated in the same contact poison he had used earlier to drug the guard in the tower.

  One small poke in his neck, barely even deep enough to draw blood, was all it took for the potent enchantment to take over and the guard slumped against the butcher’s block. Coincidence? This time… probably.

  From there it had been an effortless exit. There was a back gate that was kept latched but unlocked from this side, and his way there from the kitchen entrance was unimpeded.

  He emerged from the estate’s grounds onto a wide lane that served as a version of an alley in this neighborhood. Here in the Heights the massive walled estates fronted impressive boulevards lined with well maintained topiary and statues of famous Falkarians like Gaerdryn Falkar the First, Bargrath of Illheim and Y’fjaarlen, the first Duke of Fjaarlgard mounted on their mythical beasts of choice (gryffon, unicorn and reindeer, respectively). These boulevards cut through the uneven terrain of the neighborhood with impudence, resulting in cliffs and vast chasms one could stroll in between the estates.

  Behind the high walls and shaded villas, however, ran a network of twisted service roads – the alleys – traversed by those serving the estates, including most deliveries. This estate was on the edge of the heights, and small by the neighborhood’s standards. The owner was, after all, only a baron despite the popularity of his wine. Estate size in the Heights was still based on rank, not wealth. As one moved deeper into the neighborhood, and thus further up the ridgeline toward the nearby mountain range and away from Karth Lake, the estates and villas grew larger and larger, culminating in the castle and keep built on a promontory on the ridgeline and overlooking the entirety of the city and lake below.

  In the next neighborhood over wealthy merchants who could afford to move up the ridgeline and away from the slums in the Flats had built as close and high as their land licensure allowed. Slipping into this dense network of tall buildings brought a level of comfort for Aelfredd as he knew he was now much less exposed than he had been crossing the wide boulevard between the Heights and Topcoin. It wasn’t as crowded and shaded as the Flats, but it was much more to his liking than the Heights.

  Shortly after entering Topcoin Aelfredd paused to catch his breath – and refuel his magic reserves with a small snort of powder – in a narrow alley not far from where he’d been forced to kill the unfortunate thug earlier.

  He was at a crossroads, both literally and figuratively, and torn on where to head next.

  A few blocks to his left, the merchant homes ended abruptly at the city wall, beyond which he would find a smattering of smaller homes and commercial buildings rapidly degrading to open fields and farmland. Not far from the city wall he would find the small farm where he lived a quiet – and anonymous – life as a subsistence farmer with his younger brother, Turgeon. The boy would be asleep now, but he tried to avoid being out on jobs too late at night in case Turgeon woke up and wondered where his brother had gone.

  To his right, the ridgeline sloped gradually down towards Karth Lake, and the prestige of the neighborhoods declined with the slope, eventually reaching the lakeside slums known as the Flats. The Flats were the domain of the city’s crime syndicates, which were run by a small group of families as entrenched as the nobility with a stranglehold on Falkaria’s criminal underworld rumored to date back to before the fall of the First Empire.

  As a neighborhood, the Flats weren’t quite as uniform as the Heights or Topcoin. Construction ranged from the tall stone tenement buildings leaning against the base of the ridgeline’s cliff and each other to the barely held together wooden shacks closer to the waterfront. A range of buildings filled the twisting and narrow alleys in between, from squat stone structures housing ale halls, inns, brothels, gaming dens and worse to massive and well guarded warehouses closer to the lake and the wharf.

  Falkaria had one large central market, in the blurry border region where Topcoin gradually faded into the Flats, but the Flats was home to a broader network of smaller and less established markets where more discreet purchases could be made. It was said that one could purchase everything they needed in the central market, and everything they wanted in the Flats.

  For a moment, he was torn on where to go next. His original plan had been to head home with the book and lie low at the farm. He’d planned on sitting on the book for a few days before making his way to the Flats to visit that damned fence Guerten. But now, with the understanding that there were likely going to be goons on his trail by the end of the night, taking the book to the farm where Turgeon slept quietly didn’t seem like such a good idea.

  Now he felt it might make more sense to visit Guerten as soon as possible, even if it meant waking that idiot up in the middle of the night. So, Aelfredd turned right and made his way down into the Flats.

  In the Flats at night it was generally a good idea to have your wits about you and your guard up. This was the domain of the crime syndicates now, and outsiders and residents alike would be wise to avoid wandering down one of the many unlit alleys. The twisting and winding nature of even the main roads – many of which dead ended either at the foot of the cliff or otherwise – made sticking to the main roads easier said than done.

  Aelfredd had two things working in his favor. First, the powder magic he employed to enhance his senses – another sniff kept it active – ensured he was nearly impossible to sneak up on. Second, his garb made him recognizable as a quickman, and no halfway intelligent syndicate thug would even think of messing with a quickman on a job.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  But thugs by their very nature tend to not be halfway intelligent and not all of the lowlifes in the Flats worked for the syndicates. Independent operators could be a real nuisance.

  Aelfredd had been moving through the streets at a good pace. Not running, and mostly avoiding employing the powder magic to increase his speed, his regular walking pace would still be considered fast by most. Long experience also made him quite knowledgeable regarding routes through the Flats, so while nobody could call the route he was taking to Guerten’s antique shop direct, it was nonetheless one of the more direct routes from Topcoin to his destination.

  Which made it all the more surprising when he turned a corner and what should’ve been a four block long street of average width was instead a half block long stretch ending in a tall stone wall. He had already taken a few confident steps down the street before this realization, and was not at all surprised upon looking back in the direction he had come to find two burly thugs had stepped out of hiding places he had already passed to block off the open end of the street.

  Returning his gaze to the surprise wall, he was also not surprised to see another member of this small gang had appeared in front of him. This fellow wasn’t like the two thugs though – all muscle and mayhem, with their inelegant clubs – no, this was a more sophisticated sort of thug. Aelfredd almost considered labeling him a gentleman purely based on his refined dress and manner, but of course no gentleman would be accosting him in the street like this at night.

  “I am on a job,” he informed the gentleman robber.

  “Do I look like I care? Perhaps we could dispense with the pleasantries and acknowledge I am already aware of your job?” The man’s voice was as elegant as his dress, and Aelfredd began to suspect this was not a random mugging by drunken lowlifes as he had originally thought.

  “What do you want?”

  “The book, of course.”

  “I can’t do that, I’ve given my word to deliver it.”

  “It seems we are at an impasse then, as I have given my word that you will not deliver it.”

  The whole time they were talking the brawny thugs were creeping closer and closer to him. Perhaps they knew or at least suspected Aelfredd was aware of their approach, still they did their best to sneak up on him. With the powder magic flowing and his hearing heightened it was enough. He could even smell them getting closer.

  Something about that wall had been bothering him. While he wasn’t as well versed in these streets as the Flatsborn, he was nearly certain it shouldn’t be there.

  He focused his enhanced vision on the wall burning a bit more powder to dial up the magic even further, and the wall seemed to blur and shift before his eyes. Next, he enhanced his sense of smell and took in a deep breath, and sure enough he was able to detect a faint hint of the sickly sweet smell of smoke.

  His assailant was wielding smoke magic to create the illusion of a wall.

  “Look…” he began, trying to buy time to think this through, “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. What are they paying you for this?”

  “My services are not for sale to the highest bidder.”

  The thugs were getting close, he was running out of time. He could just charge through the fake wall and continue on his way, but then he’d just be leading his assailants to Guerten’s. That wasn’t an option.

  He really had already done enough killing tonight, and at this point he wasn’t up to the challenge of fighting a smoke illusionist: that fight would require a lot of powder, and he was already running low from the night’s activities. For all he knew, the man – or woman – casting the illusions was on a rooftop nearby.

  So that left… what? Running and hiding? Not ideal… but it might be the best he could manage for now.

  Which left the question of where to run to and hide?

  At that moment, the larger of the two thugs had gotten close enough to swing a shrapnel studded club at him, which Aelfredd deftly dodged with a double step to the brute’s side, where he landed a quick counterpunch accentuated by the contact poisoned dagger he’d already employed earlier in the night. The poison wasn’t quite as effective in a repeat use, and while it didn’t immediately put the large man to sleep it did result in a loss of fine motor skills that essentially took him out of the fight.

  There was really only one place he could run to that he wouldn’t be followed at this point. One place protected by multiple syndicate families, where magic was forbidden and even these flagrant defiers of the syndicate’s code wouldn’t dare persist in their assault. Cassie’s House wasn’t far from where he currently found himself, less than a five minute run back the direction he’d come. As an added bonus, at this time of night the place would be in full swing.

  Despite what the uninitiated thought, Cassie’s House was not a brothel. Sure, they had rooms that could be rented by the night or the hour. Those were strictly for regular patrons that needed a place to crash for the night or chose to pair off. Cassie even forbade any of Falkaria’s independent escorts from working in her establishment – but of course if a patron chose to bring a guest with them for the evening that was their choice.

  Cassie’s House was a palace of entertainment for the syndicates. Bards performed nightly on the stage, back rooms hosted regular card games, the house bookie took action on everything from the fights to the weather and the kitchen served the best food to be had in the Flats with the best wine cellar to support it.

  In the time it took for him to hit the other thug with a powder powered punch to the throat and eliminate him as a threat Aelfredd made up his mind to make for Cassie’s and sprinted back the way he came.

  Aelfredd could hear the illusionist laughing behind him as he ran, and thought that was probably a bad sign.

  He didn’t get far before he encountered another illusionary wall. More than anything, he was disappointed at the illusionist’s lack of creativity. Another wall, really? This time he knew what it was immediately when he saw it, and didn’t stop running full powder speed through it and continuing on his way.

  It was a few more blocks before he realized he could no longer hear the laughing of the illusionist, and he made it to the door of Cassie’s House without further incident.

  As he had expected, the club was busy this time of night. Most of the tables were occupied, a crooner of dubious quality was performing on the stage and the bar was packed with patrons as well. Aelfredd made a beeline for the bar, seeking out the club’s namesake who could usually be found mixing drinks behind it.

  Tonight she was nowhere to be found. The bar was staffed by Bridan, a longtime bartender in the establishment who greeted Aelfredd by name and offered him his usual drink.

  “Not tonight, Bridan. I’m exhausted and just need a quiet place to crash. Is the last room open?” he asked, referring to the farthest room from the main hall.

  “Yeah fair enough Aelf. You do look like shit now that you mention it,” the bartender handed him the key to the room and bid him goodnight.

  As he lay down in the room to get a few hours of sleep before dawn, when he would attempt to make his way to Guertan’s shop concealed by the morning foot traffic, the last thought he had was that the illusionist had, for tonight at least, succeeded in his mission. Aelfredd had failed to deliver the book to the fence, for now.