Solitaire POV: Day 76

Current Wealth: 168 gold 47 silver 29 copper

Being honest, it was quite useful to have a magus on staff. A proper magus, I mean, not a half-trained one. Corvan really did simplify a lot of matters in a lot of ways.

Take the prospect of heat, for example. Ordinarily I’d have spent an hour thinking of how to make the coal burn even faster, considering cooking it to get it even hotter, pulling out half a hundred little chemical and physical tricks to wrangle extra temperature out by the degrees. Not with Corvan present. With Corvan, I just stood back and watched the old bastard magic all the heat out for us.

It was simple geometry, what his powers did. From metres away, in an instant, he’d blasted Argar with enough heat to leave his plate armour glowing red and his flesh blistering and mangled. Hundreds of degrees, at least, diffused across multiple cubic metres of volume. We didn’t need multiple cubic metres heated up now, though, and so Corvan concentrated all that temperature into the space of litres instead.

The metals didn’t stand a chance, liquefying near-instantly into a boiling, bubbling elemental broth. He didn’t bother hiding his smugness as he saw all of us staring at the mixture, sweat beading on our foreheads, legs trembling.

Oh, sure, he was on our side. Sure, he realised what would happen if he gave Xangô cause for revenge. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the bastard had more planned, had some move up his sleeve, and I wouldn’t let him pull it off unmonitored. I had every intention of sticking to that bastard like stink on a shit.

Not openly, though. First rule of stopping people from trying to murder you: Don’t let them know that you know. Dear old mum had been very clear on that fact.

“So this mixes into a stronger kind of steel?” The magus asked, voice barely audible over the magic. It wasn’t that the flames were loud, more than the air around them was. Displaced by the kinetic waste of too much thermal energy concentrated into too little a space. He’d conjured a wind inside without even meaning to, just another little reminder of why I’d be best killing him in his sleep when it came down to it.

“It does.” I replied, calmly. “The actual mixture is a secret, though, and frankly I don’t think your tiny, shrivelled brain could even store all the information anyway.”

Corvan glared at me, sidelong, but said nothing more. He finished up the heat after a moment, and Bem and Ardin quickly doused the furnace’s outside in water to cool it enough for touching. They tipped the liquid out.

“You can work this as it cools?” I asked Ardin, he glanced up, irritably.

“Probably not now.” He grunted. “But I can learn it at least, just give me more metal, more time. I’ll experiment with techniques.”

I nodded, and he and Beam disappeared from the room. Leaving Corvan and myself alone. For one, wonderful moment I thought the magus would fuck off by himself and leave me to my business, instead he spoke.

“You’re going to be attracting attention with your technology, you realise.” He noted. “The bad kind, people are already eying you. I heard that the Dead Edge have been looking into your business, or at least I did before heading over here myself.”

To his credit, he talked about his journey to come over and murder us quite openly, quite calmly. The prick. I resisted the urge to hit him again.

“Who are the Dead Edge?”

He glanced, smug now.

“Ah, not so streetwise, then?”

“Answer me, prick.”

The magus clearly relished doing so.

“A gang, an old one, they’ve been operating in Elswick for about half a century. I actually had a run in with their founder when I was just a boy. Big, powerful, and clever. They don’t cross people they know they can’t, but they’re quick to spot and lunge for opportunities.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Opportunities like a group of half a dozen mercenaries who are making magic powder capable of blowing up buildings.” I finished for him. Corvan shrugged.

“There were advantages to selling it openly, money-wise, but you must’ve known it’d get you looked at by particular types.”

We had of course, we weren’t idiots. The simple fact was there’d been too much to gain for any real thought of keeping the stuff to ourselves. If we hadn’t been shovelling off black powder, we’d still be diving into forts and battlefields, still trying to fund our little operation. Now, though, we were just about ready to start acting as proper agents.

Still, that didn’t mean we weren’t in a fuckpile of trouble now.

“How strong exactly is this Dead Edge?” I asked, wearily. Corvan shrugged.

“A few hundred men, at least, and I hear they have a magus or two among them. As I said, they’re a powerful gang, not the sort you want interested in you.”

Well, that little tidbit could’ve come earlier. I was about to say as much when Xangô walked in. He looked nervous, his features twisted with the kind of thoughts that always bubbled under his face before a serious conversation started between us. I braced myself for what he was inevitably about to tell me.

Then frowned, as he turned to Corvan instead.

“What do you know of the Velaharo family?” He asked, abruptly. Corvan seemed surprised, I certainly was, but the magus overcame his stunned silence quickly enough to give an answer.

“Old.” He replied. “One of the oldest in Elswick, even in Eregar itself as I recall, but they’ve fallen on bad times. Dirt-poor, debt-riddled, as I hear it they haven’t been a real political factor in years.”

Xangô winced, but didn’t look surprised. It was a combination that immediately set off alarm bells for me.

“What did you do?” I asked him.

He took a second, weighing each word before he spoke.

“I should’ve asked Corvan before going to meet with Velaharo.” He sighed. “But, being fair, it wouldn’t have actually made any difference. Just as a precaution, I should have.”

“What did you do?” I pressed, fighting for calm as I found myself growing more anxious and antsy by the moment.

Xangô paused, considered, then sighed reluctantly and lurched into his explanation.

“I married her.” He replied, practically trembling at the words even as they left his lips. I just stared at him.

He. Married. Her.

Certainly, there were stranger words in the English language, even stranger combinations. “Will will smith smith” came to mind, quite quickly, and that was only scratching the surface.

Still, even knowing that, somehow the revelation that my friend was marrying a fucking aristocrat struck me differently.

My first, reflexive response was, of course, to immediately behead the offending noble. That was after all what good Liverpudlians did in front of an aristocrat, but my righteous answer was paused as I mulled the situation over some more, glaring at him.

Finally, the meat of it hit me.

“You didn’t consult us first.” I noted, glare deepening. And to think, after all that whining I’d had to endure about not killing people without permission, the bloody hypocrite had gone and gotten himself hitched!

Xangô even had the nerve to be defensive, rather than immediately apologising and telling me I could decapitate as many bandits as I wanted, as any good and reasonable person would have.

“It was a heat of the moment decision.” He snapped. “There wasn’t exactly an opportunity to say no.”

“Why wasn’t there?” I pressed, and he glowered.

“Because, as I was about to tell you, Phelia has enemies, and she reckoned one of them-”

“Phelia.” I cut in. “Your wife, first name basis already? I thought that was a sixth date sort of intimacy with your lot.”

“Oh shut up.” Xangô snapped, and I bowed.

“Of course, your Divine Holiness, please continue telling me why you married a woman you’ve spoken to for less than 10 hours.”

His irritation brought a smile to my face, but Xangô was quick in wiping it away.

“Because she has enemies.” He continued. “One Lord Arcroft, for one, who from what I’ve heard has been working with quite a powerful gang, and has a habit of using them to do extra-judicial politicking.”

I almost groaned. It was just a classic, too perfectly fucking horrible. Perhaps God really was a woman, it was the only way I had of explaining how vindictive she was.

“The Dead Edge.” I guessed, and didn’t even manage to relish the look of surprise on Xangô’s face.

“That’s right.” He breathed. “How did you know?”

It was a good question. How did I know?

Well, obviously, I knew because we were living in our own little fucking nightmare.