Lance Albright would not enjoy a few whiskies and an early night that day. Of all the outcomes he must have imagined, what transpired was probably not among them. He did learn a valuable lesson, though: never gloat before you have won.

With smugness plastered across his half-bearded face, Lance reached out to tug on the chord which ran from third floor to the basement of The Albright Establishment of Antiques and Exotic Curiosities. The length of rope was hooked to bells fitted on each and every level, that would make the entire building sing like a campanologist concert, rustling five large, bored, and irritable security guards from their quarters in their subterranean barracks. That’s not what happened though. The security team enjoyed a long, leisurely, and entirely undisturbed nap, for the full duration of their last day of employment.

In a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment, Lance Albright blinked, and was suddenly missing three of his fingers.

Lydia, never one for preamble, had started fishing for her hatchet as soon as she detected something suspicious, which, given Lydia’s predispositions, was sometime on the way up the stairs. It had taken her a frustratingly long time to work the hand axe up through the folds of her poufy garment, but by the time Albright had revealed his hand, Lydia had her hand on her favourite projectile. By the time Albright had finished his second drink, that same axe was wedged in the wall, neatly dividing Lance’s digits at the second knuckle

It was Lance’s pinky which plopped to the floor first, closely followed by his ring and index fingers, which slid a little bit down the side of the axe-head like eggs on an over-oiled pan.

The noble-turned-merchant went as pale as parchment, and dropped to the ground in a near faint. He was staring in utter disbelief at a hand that would never again fit any of his gloves.

Gabriel was surprised to find he wasn’t surprised, “You know, I really wish you would give me a heads up before you do something like that.”

“Sorry, Gabriel. Let me stop and give you a five minute briefing before I save the day,” Lydia said as she shimmied out of the crude gown Gabriel had fashioned for her.

“Oh, careful with that, Natasha will be upset if you tear it.”

“I’m not going to tear it.”

“You’re tugging on it quite hard.”

“I’m not going to tear it!”

“Alright, alright. Just fold it when you’re done.”

Lydia threw the ‘dress’ at her captain with her one hand, “How sensitive of you.”

“Fine, I guess I should probably do that,” he sighed, pulling the fabric off of his head, “What do we do about him?”

“We should probably gag him before he-”

Lance started screaming. It was a sound like foxes in heat.

“Yeah, that might have been an idea.”

Lydia rolled her eyes as she fetched the hemorrhaging noble from where he was balled up on the floor, and deposited him back in his chair where he rocked obsessively to and fro, wailing like a wolf to the moon. In an inspired moment of improvisation, Lydia fished around for something to gag him with, and ended up stuffing Lance’s mouth with the same letter he’d just been writing. It actually worked fairly well.

“Was this part of your plan?” Lydia asked sardonically.

“Anything you do is never part of my plan.”

“Smart-arse. What now?”

Gabriel ran a hand through his hair, “I guess we wait for Vish so we can interrogate him.”

“You don’t think anyone would have heard all of that screaming?”

“If they did, I don’t think I want to bump into them on the stairs. I especially don’t want to bump into them whilst dragging their heavily bleeding boss kicking and screaming in agony,” Gabriel countered.

“He’s not bleeding that badly,” Lydia harrumphed.

Gabriel watched as a thin but constant jet of blood squirted from Lance’s finger nubs, “He’s bleeding pretty badly, Lydia.”

“Whatever. Anyway, we can’t take him with us, and we can’t stay. Best we get what we need from him now and get out of here.”

“But without Vish-”

“What, you think mind-mappers are the only people in The Circle who can interrogate?” Lydia seized Lance by the throat, “Where are the jewels?”

“Uu cupf opf myff fuffing funerf!” Albright replied.

“Oh,” Lydia said, snatching the letter back out of her captive’s mouth, “Where are the jewels?”

“Heeeelp!” he shouted, not in reply.

Lydia was slightly taken aback. She responded as she usually does to any perceived threat; she cut off another one of his fingers.

Lance Albright screamed even louder.

Startled, and not a little bit pissed off at this point, Lydia cut off another finger, presumably to punish him for his audacity.

“Tell me where the jewels are or in five minutes you won’t be able to wipe your own fucking arse,” the warrior hissed.

“Lydia, a word.”

“Kind of busy here, Gabriel.”

“Mm, yeah, that’s sort of what I want to have a word about.”

Lydia sighed, stuffed the letter back into Lance’s mouth, and followed the captain out into the corridor.

Gabriel carefully closed the door and dropped his voice to a low whisper, “You can’t just go around cutting off people’s fingers, Lydia.”

“Why not? It works.”

“Does it though? So far all he’s said is, ‘Aaaah, aaah, heeeeeelp!”

“It’s a process.”

“That’s sort of what worries me. Have you done this before?”

“Cut off fingers? Yeah,” the ‘obviously’ was unspoken but evident.

“I mean successfully interrogated someone.”

“Oh. Before they died?”

“Did they tend to speak much after they died?”

Lydia’s brow was low over her eyes, “Don’t you dare say it.”

Gabriel exhaled slowly, “I think we should wait for Vish.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Is all buttery, home-kin?” the curator said, popping his head around the corner of the stairwell.”

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“Oh yeah, yeah, all good,” Gabriel reassured, “Eish, those prices though! Aaaah, heeeelp!” he mimicked again, finishing with a nervous chuckle, “Am I right?”

There was the unmistakable shattering of broken glass from the other side of the door, followed but a loud, but rapidly retreating, scream. That scream was followed by a distant thud, and the much higher, shriller scream of a young lady or small girl.

Gabriel licked his lips tentatively, “We, uh. We forgot to tie him up, didn’t we?”

Lydia sighed, walked two paces, thumped the baffled curator unconscious, and then went back inside the chamber.

It wasn’t too much of a shock to see a gaping hole in the window, with a couple of strands of torn tunic clinging to it. They risked a peek below to find Lance Albright in a narrow passage beside the building, three stories down, splayed in a pool of his own blood. He was at the feet of a recoiling Vish, who was shrieking like a young lady or small girl.

“Did you just throw a minor fucking noble at me?” the mind-mapper shouted up from the alleyway.

“He jumped,” Lydia said defensively.

“Who the hell jumps three-stories? I hate stairs as much as the next person, but damn!” the mind-mapper was being comforted by an empathetic Figo, and less comforted by a cackling Bling.

“Some people have no stomach for pain,” Lydia said with evident disgust.

Gabriel gave her a sidelong glance, “Yeah, that’s who I blame, the man with 50% of his fingers, absolutely deranged by agony. Come on, let’s search the place.”

Gabriel and Lydia tore through the small office at lightening speeds, upending draws, tearing shelves from cabinets, and hurling knick-knacks across the room. Gabriel was also searching.

“Anything?” the mercenary captain asked after he’d carefully examined the desk and its meagre contents.

“Nothing,” Lydia said between glugs of the sickly, treacle-like liquor, “Your side?”

“A whole lot of fuck all. Wherever they are, they’re not here.”

“Somewhere else in the building?”

“Maybe, but seeing as we’ve just witnessed the untimely demise of the proprietor, I’m not going to suggest we ask around.”

“Just a sec, going to grab a memento or two.”

“Do I want to know?”

“Probably not.”

They passed the still comatose curator and a few befuddled faces on the way down the stairs. The building was mostly populated by clerical staff and valuators, none of whom seemed particularly keen on getting to the bottom of the mystery behind the third-floor shrieks, and all of whom were more than happy to move out of Lydia’s way as she barreled down the staircase and straight out the front door. They ducked into the alley to find their three colleagues still staring at the pulpy remains of Lance Albright. A few onlookers had gathered at either end of the narrow passageway.

“How’s it, guys?” Gabriel said as casually as he could.

“Alright, Gabriel. Yourself?” Vish answered in much the same way.

“Yeah, yeah, you know, not bad. Find anything interesting?”

“You could say that,” Vish said, motioning towards the corpse that was decorating the paving.

“I don’t suppose you can, I don’t know, move his soul out?” Gabriel tried.

“Half of this man’s brains are on my robe, Gabriel.”

“So that’s a…”

“That’s a no.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

The five of them stared at the body with their arms folded.

“We should probably bugger off,” Gabriel wisely suggested.

“What, before there are witnesses?” Vish said.

“This… is less than ideal,” the captain summarised.

“Oi, can you pricks do nothin’ without a dash of subtlety?” a persistently recurring voice called.

“Nail-puller?” Gabriel observed stupidly, “What are you doing here?”

“The boss had a feeling you’d fuck things up. Sent us to grab a few items of interest from Lance’s office after the fact,” she explained.

Two henchmen behind her were peering at the mercenaries’ handiwork, clearly impressed.

“You won’t find much of interest in his office,” Gabriel assured.

“Not to you, maybe,” the disheveled street-rogue had a hand on each hip, “You going to stand around starin’ at that body until someone comes to slap irons on you? Bag the bloody thing and piss off.”

Gabriel looked down at the length of fabric in his hands, “Sorry, Natasha,” he said as he shrouded the body as best he could, “Now, um, how do I?”

Natasha groaned and Nail-puller watched with disdain as Gabriel daintily tried to tuck the material under Albright’s arms and legs. He gingerly prodded the fabric against Lance’s fingerless hand with the toe of his boot. It still looked very much like a splayed body when he was done.

“For gods’ sake, ge’ out the way,” Nail-puller finally relented.

In seconds she had bundled the cadaver into a neat log that could nearly pass as a reel of fabric, and hoisted the body onto Lydia’s shoulder. The warrior was too affronted to butcher the smaller woman where she stood.

“Take that, and get the aether away form here. Now!” she said through a broken-toothed snarl.

“And where exactly are we supposed to go?” Gabriel asked, frustration and despair starting to creep in.

Nail-puller looked up and down the length of the alley, where prying eyes were ducking away from her scrutiny.

“Bloody arseholes,” she seethed, and then clicked her fingers at one of her men, “Take them to the hideout, and be quick about it. Things here are going to get messy quickly.”

Screamer’s bruiser cleared a path for them. Well, he walked casually towards the onlookers and that cleared a path for them. The mercenaries tucked in behind, careful not to make eye contact with anyone they passed, for all the good it would do. They stepped it up into a light jog until they were three or four streets away, where their guide led them through a couple of alleyways that emerged into another small square, as usual teeming with the hubbub of commerce. Nobody paid them any heed.

Gabriel and the crew’s hearts were pumping the whole way. They were carrying a body in broad daylight, and nobody so much as spared them a glance. Jandrir was an obscene place.

Their guide stopped short at the edge of the slums. Apologising profusely, he announced that he only had two hoods to hand, apparently a staple among Screamer’s men, and explained in a series of grunts that he could therefore only take two of them to the hideout. As the two most associated with their most recent murder scandal, Gabriel and Lydia were unanimously voted for the honour.

The journey there was a good deal shorter than before, with far fewer twists and turns. The henchmen guiding them was clearly not as diligent as Nail-puller when it came to secrecy. Still, there were distractions enough to prevent Gabriel and Lydia from memorizing the route, primarily how they were going to handle their status as wanted criminals in yet another hub of The Kaden Circle, and how they were going to face the man who had sold them out just hours before.

By the time they were face-to-face with Screamer, Gabriel had worked up a half-decent rage. It was half-decent for a weasely reed of a man, at least.

“Ah, Gabriel, Lydia, pleasure to see you again. I’m surprised to see you back so soon.”

“What the fuck was that all about?” Gabriel started by saying, and then, when he noticed Screamer’s guards reach for their weapons, added, “Sir.”

Screamer called his men off with a lazy wave, “I understand your frustration, Gabriel, but I will ask you to keep your voice down.”

“You lied to us!”

Even beneath his bandages, it was clear that Screamer’s face darkened. His tone was slow, deliberate, and deadly.

“I did not lie. I never lie.”

Gabriel took a literal step back, “You told Albright we were coming.”

“Yes, I did. I never said that I wouldn’t. Besides, with your reputation, I had to make sure I got the most out of him before he departed to the aether,” Screamer made a point of looking over Gabriel’s shoulder to where Lydia still held the bundled noble, “I assume this is our man?”

Gabriel looked at the floor, “Yes it is. He committed suicide.”

Screamer motioned for Lydia to drop her burden and got up to inspect its contents. He pulled aside the shroud in one fluid motion, unperturbed by what lay inside.

“He did, did he? I wonder why he would ever want to do that,” the crime lord said, raising Lance’s fingerless hand.

“Believe it or not, that was actually self defence,” Gabriel hesitated, “Most of it.”

The door swung open as Screamer was shaking his head. Nail-puller entered, her chin up, but her shoulders slumped.

“I couldn’t find it, Sir,” she said meekly, “I checked everywhere.”

Screamer shot her a half smile, “No matter, I believe I have.”

Unceremoniously, he fished the letter from Lance Albright’s mouth, and broke the seal to inspect the missive.

“What’s that?” Gabriel couldn’t help but ask.

“Insurance. I had Lance draw up an agreement that ensures that the Albright house will continue trading through my networks,” Screamer looked Gabriel dead in the eye, it was a chilling experience, “in the event of his untimely demise.”

Gabriel was annoyed on multiple counts. For one, it was a sly and devious move. Secondly, he resented that Screamer had assumed that their interference would result in another death. Thirdly, he was extra annoyed that Screamer had actually been right.

However, what he said was:

“Crime syndicates write up contracts?”

“Obviously it’s not addressed, ‘Dear Screamer’,” he tucked the letter away, “but yes, it ties his family to one of my more legitimate operations.”

“I’m so happy for you.”

“Sarcasm is a very undesirable quality, Gabriel, has nobody ever told you that?”

“I’ve heard it often enough to know that the response is always equally sarcastic.”

“Hmm, you do amuse me. Were there any witnesses?”

“Lots,” Nail-puller answered for them, shooting the pair of mercenaries a ‘fucking amateurs’ look.

“Well, well, well, it seems I have myself a brace of criminals on my hands.”

Gabriel’s heart stopped in his throat.

Screamer smiled, “Or perhaps at my disposal.”

By this stage, Gabriel had had about enough, “What do you want?”

“Oh, don’t look so hurt. Luckily for you, our interests are aligned. I know my primary competitor has met with The Order of the Rising Dragon. I want to know what deals they have cut with him. You are to find out everything you can from Lance Albright and his associates, and then, of course, report back to me. In return, I will help throw the authorities off your trail.”

“That’s a very generous offer, but I don’t think we are going to learn a hell of a lot from Lance here. In case you hadn’t noticed, he is rather dead.”

“An inconvenience, to be sure, but not a catastrophe,” Screamer scribbled something down on a slip of paper and, for the second time, slid it across the table to Gabriel, “Take the body to the city crypt.”

Gabriel took the slip. It was a letter of introduction.

“Who’s this for?”

“Just go to the crypt. I think you might be surprised by what you find when you get there.”