Chương 246: Chapter 267: Meanwhile

"I'll have you know that I want to be glad to see you," I said.

"But the circumstances, such as everything you've done this past year, really make this difficult." Maybe I could convince my parents to have some more kids. Maybe then I'd get a brother I can be happy to see.

"I fully understand, and I empathize," Nathan said, sitting on top of a sideboard just far enough away that he did not interfere with Zyco's work. Zyco laid a hand on my shoulder.

"You should close your eyes for this part." Since I've ignored that warning once before, I know better than to ignore it again. I shut my eyes and try to relax them, smoothing my eyelids and not pinching my brows or cheeks. Of course I can take on the world single-handed and become master of all I survey. Once you've learned how to relax on command while someone's touching your face, everything else is easy. Rabert was still standing right there, and Vancy. Zyco and Lia.

So this is a shitty time to have Nathan sitting here like a smug gargoyle full of other people's secrets. Normally when I talk to him I like to do it far from anyone else just so I don't have to think about being overheard. It would be just so goddamn easy for him to open his mouth and say any of a dozen things that ruin me immediately. Even with my eyes closed I can easily keep track of all the activity around me. Sorcerous senses.

And so I knew exactly where to put the subtle barrier that distorted visibility and completely closed off sound. Lia paused and looked around when I did that, but Zyco didn't seem to notice and the others were all used to that trick by now.

"You didn't used to come out to so many society events," I said.

"Did you get lonesome?" He chuckled.

"Maybe a bit. I kept myself pretty busy this past year, but now it looks like I missed a lot of important events. I didn't listen at the time, but you did make it very clear that this is where the important action will be taking place. Not council chambers or townhall meetings, but fancy posh balls."

"Nathan, you're old enough to know that anything important has a guest list," I said drily.

"Isn't he like three minutes older than you?" Vancy asked.

"Can I get a little more light here?" Zyco asked.

"How much light?" I asked.

"About a candle's worth," he said. Obviously, he was expecting one of us to bring a candle over. Well, he sure was not surprised when I used my powers to pluck a candle from a nearby table and brought it over. I don't think I can possibly make a small enough portal to only make a candle's worth of light, nor can I control fire reliably well, and my aurora lights are constantly shifting. Not great for makeup work. I can recognize better ideas.

"So you're just here to attend the duke's party?" I asked.

"No ulterior motives?" He paused before answering.

"Where's that coin of yours?" The Gyre. I wanted to frown but I did not because someone was brushing along my cheeks.

"It's close by," I said, throwing the non-answer with disdain.

"Ah. In that case my motives are going to have to remain my own business," he said.

"Besides, at this juncture it literally would not matter what I tell you. By now whatever I tell you is going to make you suspicious. You will think I'm almost certainly lying, but you will still assume I might tell the truth just on the chance that you would discredit it automatically. You will plan and prepare for every eventuality with the same degree of thoroughness, leaving nothing to chance.

I could say anything, and you would assign it the same prospect of being candid, and also prepare for every course of action that I could potentially be concealing." Rabert whistled, impressed, but I was only annoyed at being read so easily and plainly.

"Are you claiming credit for my thoroughness and skepticism now?" I asked. I hate this idea he keeps bringing back that I'm actually doing everything according to his plan. It's just such a sibling thing to do. He learns that I can see the different ways that the future can progress and that I'm deliberately steering them, and he has to one-up me by claiming that actually I'm doing everything according to his plans, not mine.

"I think you've let your suspicions go rather too far," he said, picking his words delicately.

"I did not claim anything. You should know that I speak carefully. I was describing an observation about your process, and you read into it that I was claiming to be responsible. There is nothing wrong with being prepared for deception and obfuscation, but it should not become such a reflex that it hinders your ability to take things at face value when it's appropriate. Defaulting to suspicion is no better than defaulting to trust."

I ran back over the conversation in my mind, to try to find if I had jumped to conclusions, or if his words really had been as leading as I had thought. In the end, as usual, I wasted my time, soured my mood, and got no closer to resolution. It sucks having a spy for a brother. I wouldn't be going through this if he'd stayed on a warrior track. With mana-warriors you never need to worry about mind games.

"Okay, I think I've got it," Vancy spoke up. She pointed at Nathan.

"If I asked her which door was safe, what would she tell me?" Nathan stifled a laugh of his own. Glad to see that he went to see that Labyrinth stageplay I had made written and produced.

"Well, thank you for giving me something to think about, Nathan," I said in a rather less chilly voice.

"But, I must ask that you excuse yourself and give us the room. The head of the Anquarry survey corps is here to discuss geology with me in private." I didn't open my eyes. But I knew that he was shooting looks at Rabert, Vancy, Zyco and Lia, all of whom were trusted with this conference. I could see his every move, with my eyes shut. The way his mouth moved to indicate wry amusement, the slight dilation of his pupils.

I would call it the next best thing to reading his mind, except by now I'm sure he's controlled his micro-expressions to show no more than he wished. I just opened a door-sized hole in the privacy screen, and sharpened the edges of it to make it visible. Nathan paused at that doorway, and half-turned back to us.

"I look forward to chatting further during the festivities. I shall commend my best." And he stepped out, as the survey chief stepped in, and we got down to some serious business. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! Meanwhile, as I was very visibly and noticeably present and in plain view of everyone back at the Duke's party in Hearstcliff, the Duskare Debt Collector was striking. I made sure to get all the details later, a perfect play-by-play.

At the precise same time that I was making an ass of myself with the survey chief, a ghost walked the streets of Daropp Town. I've only been there once, it's a rough area that is plagued by bandits from one side, barbarians from another side, and the town itself is dominated by several very wealthy and very unscrupulous men and women who own vast compounds of fortress-like buildings. Of these, one of the worst offenders is Lewot Snairlin, the fabled string-puller and deal-maker of the Snairlin criminal empire.

Yheta's uncle, who had been grooming him to take the job. In Yheta, he had seen the perfect blend of traits: dumb and malleable enough that Lewot could make him do whatever he wanted while he was in training, but nasty and cunning enough that once he had been in the big chair for a few months he would settle in and serve as a respectably competent successor to the great Lewot. I visited his house once, several years ago. I used my ring to spy on him.

I walked past the guards like I had an appointment, slipped the door latch, and moved through the place without ever seeing anyone inside. I wore a hooded cloak, there was never anything to connect me to that. Eventually Lewot realized that anything on his desk was being leaked to the Harigold leaders, and he started planting misinformation. But that was a long time ago, and I had covered my tracks rather well for a pre-teen. The ghost that stalked the streets of Daropp was far less subtle than I ever was.

Black cloak, black mask. Leather and armor and small oddly-shaped trophies attached to his breastplate and gauntlets. His edges blurred, and smokey blackness poured off his body, writhing and wisping in the air as he strode towards his target. He had a faded, unreal look to him, as if he and the ink-in-water cloud that attached to him were one and the same. The shadows seemed too solid, the man seemed too ethereal.

He twirled a pair of long wooden staffs, one in either hand, and he looked like six feet of trouble with a warning not to get involved. From a window overhead, there was a gasp as he was spotted. A minute later, an alarm bell began ringing. Normally it signaled a bandit charge, or a barbarian onslaught. More eyes went to the streets. Shutters were slammed shut.

By the time the Debt Collector got to the Snairlin compound, the guards on the rooftop were already in firing position, flat on their stomachs at the edge of the lip, crossbows aimed. They did not wait for the intruder to declare intent or show a flag, did not wait for threats or demands. In Daropp, being obviously threatening does not need any further explanation. They fired, and started reloading. They were not using the massive steel crossbow that Quarl favored, that thing could shoot through a tree.

These crossbows were powerful but less so, the main advantage was that the shorter span of them allowed them to be fired from a recessed position or in close ranks, presenting a much more difficult target than longbow archers, and much more able to defend each other. Still, even with the lighter and weaker bows, a dozen direct hits should have been enough to turn the man into a porcupine-like corpse. The bolts whistled past and struck the fitted-stone ground of Merchant's Square on the other side of him.

For an instant the bolts displaced holes through him, the guards swore they could look clean through him before his body filled back in. The guards reloaded and fired. A score of crossbow bolts punched through him like knives through water. Lewot's wall guards were not paid or trained to figure out novel solutions or improvise in the face of new foes, they were hired to shoot, reload, and repeat the process from the top.

An implacable phantom, the Debt Collector just ignored them all and walked towards the building, an unhurried stride, an untroubled stance. He gave them plenty of chances to see how useless their weapons were. Gloating without words. Onlookers from overlooking windows, from arrowslits, from alleyway entrances all stared at the display. Against his black leather outfit, a glittering key hung from a chain, but he never reached for it. And then he stopped swinging his staffs around idly, they stilled.

He pointed one, and it glowed just before the front door of the Snairlin mansion exploded inward. Splinters and dust billowed, and from the gaping entrance a rush of warriors poured forth, bellowing rage and swinging their mana-infused weapons. Daggers and hatchets tore at the misty presence, to no more effect than the crossbows. He looked around at the warriors who surrounded him, wearing themselves out in pointless exercise. He made sure they had plenty of time to see him, to get a good look at the details.

Then he transferred both staffs into one hand. And with a flick of his wrist, the whole area was filled with a choking smoke that drove the warriors away, scrubbing at their watering eyes, strangling on their own saliva, bellowing in rage and pain. They fell to their knees or ran blindly away, and the Debt Collector walked inside. One door after another was smashed open, but he never turned down any of the fortress-manor's dead ends or wrong turns.

He smashed doors as if for fun, not because he was looking for his target. He barely glanced into them, at the cringing clerks or screaming prostitutes that he left in his wake. More guards came running, but they too learned caution quickly. Other soldiers raced from nearby compounds, lending aid to the neighbors, mutual support. They found themselves stumbling into the armed traps that Lewot had activated, but that the invader had not triggered.

With a yank of a switch, Lewot had turned his fortress home into a deathtrap, gears turning and pulleys shifting, engaging the tripwires and pressure plates and the acid vats. But the Debt Collector did not care. Lewot Snairlin did not put his security only in the hands of guards, and warriors, and allies, and traps, he even had two magisters to guard his inner sanctum when he was working. The debt collector waved his staff, and the magisters were disarmed, their staffs rendered to expensive kindling. They ran.

The Duskare nightmare did not even bother with this door, he walked right through it, leaving his mantle of smoke and haze behind. And the stocky older man held a sword out, jabbing at the intruder.

"Stay back! I don't owe you nothing!" The sword glinted with mana-marks, but the crimelord did not have mana to fuel them, he lacked the talent and just brandished the most powerful and most expensive sword he could find.

"What a waste," the cloaked Collector sighed, and with two swings of his staffs he had the old man disarmed. He bent low, picked up the sword, and pushed it through the old man's chest until it came out the other side.

"Good blade." And then he ran out into the hallway, sprinting from the crime scene. The area was flooding with guards running in one direction and Snairlin henchmen and subjects running outward. He threw down his staffs, and his armor discorporated, the staffs themselves vanished. A panicked-looking young man, probably an intern, wearing smudged and faded tabard of the Snairlin crest, ran right out the front door past a line of waiting warriors. From there, he moved to his safe-house to await extraction.

A perfect mission. Probably the best use I could have put the Wraith Key towards. It's a great way to bypass a single door, but it's most useful if you don't bypass doors, it leaves you in wraith form until you do find one. The staffs were not full magister staffs, just one bearing a single sigil to break wood, and the other ensigiled to find a specific man. Between that and the alchemical tear gas that Quarl already had access to, he could make a convincing Debt Collector.

The armor and the oak wood of the staffs was pure sorcery, and left no trace behind. Lewot Snairlin, stabbed through the heart by his own wastefully expensive weapon, an ironic death. His home in shambles, a trademark of the Debt Collector. The warrior bodyguards had plenty of time to study his armor, which was perfect to every detail in the description being circulated by Tsilven House. And with it, the death of the man who could seize Yheta's network from me after his death, securing my connections in advance.

Of course, to anyone else it would look like Lewot was murdered for cause, and then someone took out his heir just to tie up loose ends. Quarl was happy to take this job. Not just for the money, but for the chance to live that legend for an hour. The Debt Collector's renown was growing in whispers and shadows. [Quest Checkpoint Complete: Take This To A Hire Level. 10 XP. Advancement: The Assassin] And that puts me over the top for level 12!