Chapter 84 - A Message for the Guild
You could argue that showmanship robbed our advantage, or you could argue that the display of confidence enhanced it. Whichever side of the rail you fell, you’d have to argue it very loudly, since all the wards I’d placed around the square over the past week detonated at once, and this was one of the three squares I’d concentrated them most heavily.
Even if we can’t always pick our fights, we can sometimes pick our battlegrounds. The Soul Seeker’s guild had sent an arrogant, cocksure seeker after me, and he’d come to track me in Barrowdown. Barrowdown was my house. I hadn’t spent the last months fending off sharks, orcs, narcotic peddlers, and every penny-scammer in the downs just to give it up when the first guild muscle came calling. I’d studied the wards, just as I’d promised myself. I’d found something with some bite that was within my range. Picked a few strategic locations around the district and went to work with a card over my eye and a lump of sorcerer’s chalk. What I’m saying is, I’d taken steps. Now, thanks to those steps, the guild lackies were taking flight.
The thug with the pole was knocked clean off his feet and through the front face of a storefront. Iron ball and long-knives got hit with about half a wall’s worth of splinters and flying daub, sending them sprawling to the cobbles. The cobbles under the robed Seeker bucked, but a quick trick of his cards saved him from the worst of it.
Annalisa took her fingers out of her ears and went to work. A touch of the three of dragons saw her leaping through a frost tunnel and dropping right above the seeker’s head with a punch that barely missed, and spread a spiderweb of frost across the broken cobbles. She had a lot of practice sparring with me while I had next to no practice fighting Soul Seekers. You’d think that since I know what they’re capable of, I’d be one step ahead. Well, the enforcer had probably fought dozens of unlicensed seekers. Attacking him directly would be playing to his strengths. Being one step ahead was sending a close-range brawler to smash through everything he could throw at her.
I headed for Iron ball. Long-knives was out out. But the other brawler was already climbing to his feet, showing surprising resilience. Before he could recover, I snaked out my deck and charged the tip with the two of knaves, creating a cutting whip that forced him to draw his hand away from his weapon. He scrabbled back, oddly lithe for a tough his size, and I used the momentum of the cards to snap the lash around and send a half-dozen charged cards flying toward him with lethal intent. He scrabbled back, managing to scoop one end of the chain up and pull the ball into a spin.
He shot the iron projectile back out at me, flowing like water into a wide arc that would have taken my ankles out from under me if I hadn’t jumped when I did, over top of where it sparked off the cobbles. Faster than I would have thought possible, he pulled the other end of the chain and his ball came back, swinging this time into a vertical arc. I stepped to the side and called my cards back to me. Iron ball was fully engaged now, and I gave ground, searching for an opening while tapping the four of dragons to expose any weaknesses.
I discovered something else, entirely.
I cursed and pulled my dagger. Iron ball pulled out something too: a Deck of Wills.
“They sent two of you after me?” I asked.
Iron ball fanned out his deck and charged a pair of cards with his will. The chain on his ball began to warp, flowing like water—some sort of streams suit enchantment that made its motions hard to follow. In that moment of distraction, a solid force bowled me over, pushing me across the cobbles. I groaned, rolling onto my hands and pushing back up. I knew that attack. I’d suffered it enough times at the hand of Tanlith Guifoyle.
Streams and lances.
“Reading suggested we ought take you serious,” said Iron ball. He lashed out, sending a wave through the chain that resulted in the length of it crashing like a breaking wave. I barely got out of the way, and it dug a furrow in the cobbles at my feet. The lances came again, but I met them with the two of towers, arranging my deck like a fence and straining will-against-will with the more experienced seeker. I grit my teeth and glanced down at the possessed dagger. It’s eye was closed.
“Wake up, damn you!” I hissed. I hadn’t gotten it to speak to me again since I’d pulled it out of the undercity and tried to uncover its secrets. I’d seen what it could do, and it had recognized me as its new owner, but certainly given no indication that it would cooperate since. It didn’t seem eager to impress me now. Still, the sleeping dagger was sharper even than the masterwork scale-etched knife I’d taken off the Mayazian bruiser. If I could get close to Iron ball, it would cut all the same. Easier said than done, mind you.
“Towers and knaves, huh?” he said, grinning. “This’ll be interesting.
To my side, the other soul seeker seemed to be holding off Annalisa—if barely. Her repeated punches and kicks met with walls of the seeker’s own, held solid by his will. Of the three, only he had no weapon, and it seemed he’d developed his ability to use the cards themselves as one, just as I’d been learning to do. Only, he’d had years of practice, and it showed. A wide arc of cards caught Annalisa across the midsection and lifted her off her feet, sending her spiraling through the air. Worse yet, I could see the pole-armed one picking his way out of the storefront wreckage. He was bleeding from a dozen cuts, and still somewhat dazed, but not out of the fight.
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I pushed in against Iron ball behind a bulwark reinforced by the two of towers but held one card in reserve behind them. Iron ball fanned out his deck again, pulling another spear card to his hand. But as soon as he sent his will into it, I split my bulwark of cards and exposed the face of the two of storms.
Iron ball’s eyes went wide as the energy from his own will shoved itself back into the card. It proved too powerful for the card to handle, and it burst into flame in his hand.
“Fates!” he swore, throwing the ruined card down. “He’s got storms!”
The leader of their little hunting party was in poor position to answer, doing everything he could to fight off my partner. She leapt up for an overhand right, and when the cards came up to block, her fist dropped through a portal and caught the Soul Seeker on the side of the knee. He buckled over, going down on that side, and Annalisa landed a kick to the side of his head that sent him sprawling.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught the fighter with the pole coming up on my flank, but he skidded to a halt when he saw his ally slide across the ground. I held my knife at the ready.
“I’ve got this,” said Iron Ball, spinning his ball, prior mirth forgotten. “Go help Dallers,”
Dallers, Dallers, where had I heard that name mentioned? Sometime at the academy, surely. But I couldn’t recall its significance. I didn’t have much time to think about it before the fist-sized ball shot out, aiming for my own kneecap in retribution. I stepped out of the path, and coating the blade with the two of knaves, drove my dagger down through one of his chain links and into the cobbles.
The seeker enforcer tugged, but the knife was magic and the keening enchantment didn’t break at the first sign of resistance the way it had on lesser blades. Handy, that.
“Don’t like seeing me burn your cards, do you?” I asked, pulling another card into my hand.
Iron ball scowled, dropping the chain and calling a card from his own deck.
“I don’t plan on stopping at one,” I said, and blew into the two of dragons.
The night lit up with brilliant, scarlet flame as the card turned my breath to dragonfire in the night. The column of fire speared out, searing half of Iron ball’s deck before he had a chance to react. The dragons in my deck roared with approval. The pole user skidded to a stop and stared at the fire, before changing his mind yet again and heading back toward me.
I didn’t desperately empty my lungs into the card as I had in the tunnels beneath the city. A dragon is always in control. “The downs don’t recognize guild authority,” I shouted behind me, before taking another deep, measured breath. Iron ball did his best to get the rest of his cards between me and him, giving him a chance to retreat. I took the opportunity to reduce his greatest weapon to a pile of cinders.
“He’s got dragons, too?!” shouted the confused bruiser.
Iron ball was already on the retreat, so I turned to the hapless fighter facing down a mage with a stick and a prayer. “Did they tell you I was a fake?” I asked. “That I had one, maybe two cards I could call upon?”
He threw down his stick, backing away. “They didn’t tell me shit!” he said. “I just took this job for some extra silver. Ain’t none of this worth it!”
He turned to run. I let him go, moving to retrieve my dagger before moving to where Annalisa had subdued the lead enforcer in a pile of shredded cards. She still burned with the intensity of the three of dragons—though the drain didn’t seem as bad as it once was. Not since meeting the Heiress. I don’t know if that’s because my fitness had improved or because I’d become more attuned than ever to the suit. Perhaps both.
I squatted down over the defeated seeker enforcer, watching his warlord arcana flicker and sputter.
“I expected more from the guild,” I said.
“Well, maybe the guild should have expected more from you,” spat the seeker. “You’re obviously guild-trained. Quad-suited to boot?”
He held his hand out to call the cards back to his hand, but I sent my will out as well, wrestling him for control of his own deck. His face twisted with effort But he was exhausted from fighting Annalisa. I knew how that could be. Hell, even talking to her could be exhausting. Still, his focus was like steel, and it clashed against mine as sharply as any sword.
I concentrated harder, making my will resonate with the inverse suits in his deck—those would be the first to defect. His towers tried to deny me, but I sidled in and slipped past their guard. Storms fought me, matching will to will. Rather than battle them, I let them wash over me and settle into a calm. The dragons raged against me, proud and strong. I became one of them, and then showed them I was stronger.
“How are you doing that?” the guild enforcer seethed from behind clenched teeth. He tried to send his will into my deck as well, but the towers shut him out as if he stared at a wall ten paces thick. He flinched back as if struck. “Who are you?”
The knaves in his deck reached out to me. I don’t think they much cared for the seeker. Thought his tactics to be the wrong sort of underhanded. They offered an open door and I stepped through it. After that, the rest of the suits folded beneath my will. His deck crumbled under my intent, the portraits on the cards sizzling as I excised the wills from his deck—leaving nothing but singed plaques of polished wood. I picked one up. The two of knaves. Appropriate.
I handed him the ruined card. “Just one who seeks truth in mystery,” I said, quoting an oft-spoken mantra from the academy. I looked him up and down. “Take off your robe.”
He didn’t move. I nodded to Annalisa, and she reached out, flipping over the enforcer and dropping him right out of the garment. I shrugged out of my own robe and swung his around my shoulders. It was in much better condition, and padded with armor panels, to boot. I tossed the other one down. “Here. You came for missing guild property? Now you’ve got it.” I tugged the lapels of the robe. “I think this is a fair trade for your life. Don’t come back to Barrowdown unless you’ve got something even nicer to give me, yeah?”
“Fuck you,” he said.
I tsked him. “See to your friends. I have an engagement.”
With Annalisa in tow, I turned east, stopping to pull my demon dagger from the cobbles.
“Fat lot of help you were,” I muttered.
The blade vibrated with annoyance in my hand. I stopped, fumbling for the four of knaves.
It yawned, sending an impression of fatigue across the deviltongue. “Wake me when there’s blood,” it said. Its awareness faded once more. I shivered.
“Come on,” said Annalisa, excitedly. She’d already pushed the fight aside to make room for new ideas. “I want to play Hawks and Wheels!”