Josie walked across town to the Coin. She had plenty of time before the meeting. She

filed away Jack’s doubts with her own in the back of her mind. She could ask Fass

about the procedure when they had done with the other business of the day.

They could both be worried over nothing. Todd might be a normal young man they

just didn’t like because he was dating their adopted sister.

She supposed Jack felt the same way back home, but his four sisters didn’t need his

protection. They were more than capable of putting their romantic interests in the

hospital if they wanted out of the relationship.

She reached the Coin and knocked on the door. Of course it was closed. The casino

ran in the night time. Day time was for cleaning and getting set up for later. She idly

wondered how much money flowed through the gaming house.

“Can I help you?,” said the grumbling manager. He glared at her through the crack

of the door.

“I’m Josie Fox,” said Josie. She kept her poncho over her hands in case she wanted

to do something to fix his scowl. “I’m here about a meeting.”

“The boss said you would be coming by,” said the manager. He waved her inside.

“They are in the downstairs office.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Josie. She crossed the floor to the space where she had dealt

with Evan Fros. He had deserved a small portion of the punishment she had handed

out. She should check on the Pears to see how they were doing after what had

happened.

She found Fass and Guin going over the book she had compiled. Their seconds

shared cake in the background. She smiled slightly as she closed the door behind her.

“Mistress Fox,” said Guin. “We think that we have something for you, but we are not

sure.”

“It looks like a cargo depot,” said Fass. He waved her over to look at the charts they

had placed on the table.

“We think that the women being funneled through Hawk Ridge are being massed

together to head up to a bunch of border towns like Cairn,” said Fass. His finger

traced the route on the assembled maps. “Then they are split up and sent across to the

Shemmarians.”

“Did you find a planner behind this?,” said Josie.

“Not yet,” said Linus, chewing on his cake. “We think someone in the Exchange is

the partial helper for the money. We have traced down some of their holdings and

they match up with property taken by the old Duke, and with what the dead members

owned.”

“Jack might have done us a massive favor when he hit that party,” said Guin.

“In what way?,” said Josie. “I thought it was a mistake.”

“I did too,” said Guin. “I have some people in the Guard. Jack asked me to notify

them and send them up to the Hent Mansion. They have identified most of the dead

and notified the next of kin. That got us a list of property and funds moving through

the bank as part of the notification process in court. Jack’s method, whatever that was

but I am going to say the figure with a scythe he displayed to the new Duke, altered

the bodies that some of them had to be looked at by their next of kin so we could be

sure who he had killed.”

“That added with the book shows us the outline of the routes and who we should

expect to be involved in the different cities,” said Fass. “You were not kidding when

you said that the nobility was involved.”

“Not all of them,” said Josie. “Cilt seems clear. Endwright was poisoned by his wife

and she was running the show. The new Duke seems okay on the surface and is on

the hook for all the money the bank funneled out of his duchy whether he likes it, or

not. I imagine he is trying to find the other judges involved in the fake land scheme

right now.”

“And we can help with that,” said Guin.

“You figured out who they were?,” asked Josie.

“Budd did,” said Fass. He indicated his cake eating lieutenant with a thumb.

“Magistrates Lewn, Moac, and Harn come up on the warrants associated with the land

seizures. The payments are filtered through to commanders of the Guard.”

“Lewn is gone,” said Josie. “Jack turned him into a baby. It was some new thing he

wanted to try out. We left him in the care of his butler.”

“He turned him into a baby?,” asked Budd. He had seen some things hanging out with

Josie. That was a little much.

“I think he likes to experiment sometimes,” said Josie. “I don’t know. I didn’t want

to ask because I didn’t want to know the answer. Apparently he worked out a way to

push time backwards. There is only one problem with the process that we think

happens. It will be a few years before Lewn can answer us for sure.”

“Can I ask about this possible problem?,” said Guin. He had seen some things from

Jack, and had seen some outlandish behavior. This was a little much.

“Jack pushes time back,” said Josie. “Say you were like a hundred years old. You

want to be fifty again. It can be done. You just forget everything after the specific age

that you stop aging.”

“You would lose half of your life,” said Guin. “There would be holes where family

and contacts had been but they had died and not been renewed. Your enemies would

remember you, but you wouldn’t remember them and they could take advantage of

that. You would lose any expertise with something. I see all types of problems with

that.”

“We could be wrong,” said Josie. “You might remember even if you are physically

younger. We won’t know unless we check in with Lewn, who won’t be able to talk

for another five years.”

“That’s either a second chance, or letting someone get away to try to get revenge

later,” said Fass.

“If we are still around when Lewn gets old enough, hopefully Jack gave him

something to help straighten his life out into something a little more non-evil,” said

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Josie. “But that’s outside the scope of this. Can I hit this place and wreck it enough

to ruin things for the Montrose?”

“Maybe in the region, but not much overall,” said Fass. “There are a dozen of these

shipping sites in the kingdom. If you paralyzed all of them, there would still be

women on the road being shipped to other places around those big places.”

“If you hit this one on the way to Kearnly, you might divert a lot more of their traffic

north and south and keep them away from the Shemmarians a few weeks longer,” said

Guin.

“I ran into a lady last night from Kearnly,” said Josie. “And there were some brothers

up there. I heard they had a friend that lived out in the swamps. I always meant to

go up there and find him.”

“They resell the women when they are no longer useful,” said Budd.

“Resell?,” asked Josie.

“As soon as whomever was done with Emily when she reached her final destination,

the client could resell her back to the Montrose at a lower price,” said Budd. “So we

talked about it and we want to hunt them down until we are done.”

“The Guild has been taken an interest in this,” said Fass. “There is talk about purging

members with the tattoos.”

“If more than Emily have been sold, it could start an open war,” said Budd.

“Adventurers are by nature murderous and vengeful.”

“I think taking on the nobility will get the Guild stomped,” said Josie. “It doesn’t

matter if Jack and I do it. We aren’t an army. If the Guild does it, the king might take

notice and move to quash your movement before it could do anything. If we had

official backing from the king, we could have an open season declared.”

“That’s what we want,” said Guin. “You two were already going to be at war without

the kingdom, but if the King gets wind of this, he would need to know that the

enemies of the kingdom were benefitting from it before he would give any more

hands a chance.”

“I’ll send him a letter,” said Josie. “I’ll leave you guys out of it. I’ll put in a copy of

everything we found so far, and what has been happening. Maybe he will ask for

proof. Maybe he will give the Guild a shot at rooting these people out.”

“Maybe he will want to execute us as traitors to the state,” said Linus. He paused

eating his cake at the thought of losing his head to an executioner’s axe.

“I am more worried what will happen if a civil war breaks out when we don’t know

why the Shemmarians need so many women,” said Josie. “Does the King know about

this already and is looking for a reason to do something? That is what bothers me the

most. We have one faceless hunter out there going about his business. There are

bound to be more wandering around before too long once they make the connection.”

“And if the King declares a war with the Shemmarians,” said Guin. “That could turn

into a crusade. We can’t afford that.”

“All right,” said Josie. “I will write the letter. Either he already knows, or he

dismisses it. I hit the place you guys picked out as soon as I deal with the Lich Queen

and Sawtooth. If the King gives the go ahead, we start amassing adventurers to deal

with the Montrose near Hawk Ridge, and slowly work our way to other cities in the

country. That’s the immediate plan, right?”

“Yes,” said Guin. “I will talk to the local Exchange people and see what they can give

me.”

“I will talk to Sally about hiring people to help with the smaller targets,” said Fass.

“We can still do bandit runs with what we have.”

“I have another model back home,” said Josie. “It is giving me a picture of where the

Montrose people are in real time.”

“What does that mean?,” asked Fass.

“I built it when I built the Cairn model,” said Josie. “It is taking pictures of where the

Montrose members are every five seconds I think. It is something we can use to help

our raids.”

“That seems good,” said Fass. “The Cairn model was a great help.”

“I have to make sure Bea is ready for this expedition on top of everything else,” said

Josie. “I wonder if Jack figured out the ring he salvaged yet.”

“What expedition?,” asked Budd. He put his empty plate down on a nearby table.

“Beatrice was asked to go on an expedition to some ruin by her boyfriend,” said Josie.

“They are supposed to be signing on as noobs to get the experience.”

“Never heard of that,” said Budd.

“Excuse me?,” said Josie.

“The Guild doesn’t do that unless a quest came up where more than one group was

needed,” said Fass. “An experienced group would only take someone new if they

knew that person and were training them as a replacement. Calls for a mass gathering

are usually like a war action. And there is no quest for anything like that as far as I

know.”

“Matter of fact, the only quest I know of where more than one group has been

designated is the Kearnly Egg Hunt,” said Budd.

“Todd lied about the expedition?,” said Josie.

“It depends,” said Fass. “Do you remember what was said?”

“Bea came to me this morning and said they had been invited to go,” said Josie.

“There would be a core of experienced adventurers going with some amateurs filling

out the ranks. Todd was one of those amateurs and he asked Bea to go along with

them so they could spend more time together. I promised to get her a bird, and Jack

and Elaine were going to outfit her for the trip when it was supposed to start in a few

days.”

“I can say that doesn’t usually happen unless the Guild sets it up,” said Budd. “You

don’t just get invited along. Either you know someone and they say yes, or you don’t

and you stay home.”

“I have been on an expedition like that,” said Fass. “I went with my Uncle. He knew

two of the party leaders involved and they asked him to help out. He brought me

along to help him.”

“So there’s a chance that there is no expedition,” said Josie.

“A bigger chance than not,” said Fass.

“Bea acted like she was going,” said Josie.

“Does she have a license?,” said Fass.

“No,” said Josie.

“She can’t go on any expedition through the guild without a license and the

paperwork for next of kin,” said Fass. “If she were caught on a legitimate quest

without a legitimate license, she would be barred from the Guild.”

“The Guild doesn’t like independent adventurers roaming around causing problems

while trying to solve jobs for people,” said Budd.

“Where is this building you need hit?,” asked Josie. Guin handed her a set of

directions that went in her bag. She could find it later after this latest crisis was

resolved. “I will find it later after I figure out what I am going to do about this thing

with Bea’s boyfriend.”

“This might be totally innocent,” said Guin. “The boy seemed harmless at dinner.”

“Back home,” said Josie. “There was a guy. He seemed harmless. He dressed up like

a clown to cheer up sick children. He ran his own business. He was everybody’s

friend.”

Guin waited silently for the point.

“One day the local Guard became suspicious of our friend, the clown,” said Josie. She

frowned. “I don’t remember how now. In the end, they dug up the bodies of thirty

boys and young men from under his house that he had raped and murdered. But he

was harmless. I have to make sure Bea is safe before I can turn my attention on other

people’s problems. I have to make sure this expedition is the real deal before I let her

go. If it isn’t, I want to know why Todd lied to Bea other than the obvious.”

“We have other places selected,” said Fass. “Would it be okay if Budd and I looked

at this model?”

“Yes,” said Josie. “Master Guin, I will send a note to the Duke about the other two

judges and let him do what he is going to do. If I need to sweep them up later, I will.”

“Don’t get too excited and miss the bigger picture,” said Linus. He chewed on a piece

of his cake. “This could all be some kind of misunderstanding. You don’t want to set

someone on fire just because they said the wrong thing.”

Josie looked at the big man. He looked like a goon in a suit, but he had a thinking

brain behind that simian face. She didn’t know what was going on. She should find

out before making things worse.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Josie. She bowed to them. “I should look this one time

before I leap. If you guys can find me more targets, or a brain other than the ruling

committee of the Exchange, that would be great. If I can change the flow of the

women, that might be enough for me to start crippling this beast. Eric, if you need to

look at the model, it is at the Hole in the Wall. Jack is there doing something. He can

let you in if you want to look at the thing in the next few hours. I don’t know where

I will be. I will let you guys know when I have the letters to the King and the Duke

written.”

She turned and strode from the room.