was made there, and us, right where they can see us. We’re legendary, and worshipped, and real, Petri. The guild has protected this city for hundreds of years, maybe longer, and its people know it in their blood and bones. We don’t tell them who to worship or how to live. We just are. We are the city, and the city is us, and yet we are not of the city, and the prelate has no claim on us, cannot rule us and can compel me to say nothing. So tell me, what will the prelate do when his patience runs out? The same as he has all these past years – nothing of any consequence. He can make our lives more difficult perhaps, but not by much, and we’ll weather it as we weathered much worse before now.”
Petri sat blandly. This was Eneko’s standard response, and while true enough, he’d heard it too many times before. But what came next startled him.
“I told her, you know. Told her that you were using her. Because you were, weren’t you? Using her to try to winkle information for the prelate. Spying on her, and me, the guild.”
He smiled at the look of shock that must be written all over Petri’s face. It explained everything – why Petri’s note offering Kacha comfort after that idiot Vocho had killed the priest had been returned so vehemently with his ring, why she’d taken such a delight in their duel by the carriage. Why she seemed to hate him when once she’d said she loved him. She’d found out the truth he’d worked so hard to hide, a truth that had rapidly become false as he’d got to know her, but how would he ever make her believe that? He couldn’t, and not just because she’d probably skewer him if he got too close. He’d betrayed her even before they knew each other.
“You think I didn’t guess? That I wouldn’t tell her, make her see?” Eneko said into these thoughts. “A prelate’s man cosying up to my personal apprentice? A blind man could see what you were about, but you blinded her well enough. Did you find anything out?”
Petri pulled himself together, but all thoughts of trying to get Eneko to tell him something, anything, fled. It had been a faint hope at best, but one that had to be tried. “I found out enough.”
Eneko laughed. “I rather doubt that, or not from Kacha. Vocho on the other hand… You may as well leave now. The prelate can set his men to watch me all he likes, open my messages – no don’t deny it, he has – do whatever he feels he needs to. I don’t know where they are. If I did, I’d hardly hand them over to you for execution, no matter what they’ve done. They’re no longer part of the guild, which is punishment enough for both of them, and no longer my responsibility.”
Eneko turned away to some papers on his desk, effectively dismissing Petri, as he’d always done. Dismiss, disown, destroy. It was Eneko who had made his life the misery it was.
Petri swept the papers off Eneko’s desk and was gratified to see a crack in the calm façade. “Soon enough,” he said. “Soon enough this won’t be your guild. I look forward to the day I can return the favour you once did me, and shut the gates on you.”
They stared at each other for long moments before Petri straightened up smartly and left. His boots clicked on the stone floor in a staccato rhythm that echoed in his head. Not long now, and this guild would be his, and Eneko would be the one staring at a guild that had betrayed him.
Not long, provided he could find Kacha and Vocho and the damned chest.
Egimont rode into the horse dealer’s yard with ten good men behind him. It was a ramshackle place with falling-down fences, a barn with more holes than roof and what seemed like acres of mud. One of the early clockwork combination hay scyther/stookers lay in pieces in the shade of the barn, straggles of grass growing through it as though in mockery. The horses dealt here didn’t seem much better – a group of underfed nags fetlock deep in mud looked up dully as they rode in.
A woman came out of the hovel that seemed to pass for a house, though she was spruce enough in a homely kind of way. She gave them