The Price of Silence
Even in broad daylight, a dismal air clung to the building. He followed the garden path, long since surrendered to grass grown knee-high. The moment he stepped onto the ivy-choked porch, he felt mana catch at his foot.
An alarm spell.
Chris went to the front door and worked the knocker. Two heavy blows tolled through the wood. He stood there and waited a long while, and he had grown tired enough of it to reach for the knocker again when the door finally opened. A half-bald old man stuck his head out.
"Who is it?"
"A guest."
"Come in."
The old man stepped aside to let him pass. Once Chris was inside, the old man shut the door, nodded at the bag in his hand, and asked.
"Want me to carry that?"
"Kind of you, but no."
"Suit yourself. Follow me."
Curtains were drawn across the windows, and the mansion was dark from end to end. A few lanterns on the walls labored to push the gloom back.
The old man led him underground. As Chris descended, he studied the walls. Dozens of holes had been bored into them. In a crisis, poison would spray from those holes, or arrows.
"Grim place."
He muttered it with his mana held ready, and hoped he would not have to use it. The old man smiled a strange smile.
"Too many bastards walking around with their livers hanging out. Hope you're not one of them."
"I've been famous for a small liver since I was a boy. Don't trouble yourself."
At the bottom of the stairs a long corridor ran on, stopped at the far end by an iron door. The old man struck it five times. The rhythm was peculiar enough to be a signal agreed on in advance.
Metal groaned, and the door opened. The old man drew back.
"Go on in."
"You're not coming?"
The old man tapped his lower back with the back of his hand.
"Too much to do."
Chris went through the iron door alone. It left a bad taste. The moment reminded him of walking into the prison at Mick Magic Tower, long ago. Inside, the dark was pitch-black.
"Anyone there?"
His voice boomed back at him, thick with the particular feel of a cellar.
A finger snapped. Mana lamps flared on all at once, and the room leapt into brightness. Chris winced at the sudden change.
The man seated behind the desk, fingers laced, spoke.
"Sit."
A chair slid forward of its own accord and stopped in front of him. Chris gave it a brief look, then sat. Desk and chair were some ten paces apart.
"A mage?"
The man unlaced his fingers and nodded.
"That's right."
Chris was about to state his business when the man raised a palm and cut him off, then lowered the hand and turned it up, open.
"You want money?"
"I do."
"I haven't even told you what I came for."
"Exactly."
Chris blinked.
"I'm not following."
"Why did you come to the Black Hand Guild? You came because you want something, didn't you?"
"I did."
"Deal with me, and information about you comes into being inside our Black Hand Guild."
"And?"
"The Black Hand will do anything, so long as it pays."
"I know."
That was precisely why he had come. The Black Hand was rumored to hold the Empire's underworld in its grip, and these days it was pushing past the borders, extending its reach into other nations.
"Trading in information is one of those things. I know every person of consequence in the Britan Kingdom."
"A fine memory. Congratulations. And what does that have to do with me?"
"I don't know you."
"Is that strange?"
"I run the Black Hand's branch in Header, Britan's second city."
"Quite a rise, for a man so young. Congratulations again."
"What I mean is, riffraff don't get in to see me."
Chris tilted his head.
"Then why am I seeing you?"
"That's the strange part. Golin doesn't guide just anyone."
"Golin? The fat man with the rotten teeth?"
"That's him. He may not look it, but he owns Header's night streets. Golin has a very good nose. Bringing you here himself means he smelled something dangerous on you... and yet I checked thoroughly, and a man who looks like you doesn't appear in any..."
"Checked?"
The sound Chris made was almost admiring.
"Ah. So you left me standing at the door while you looked into me."
The man nodded, then held out his open palm again. Chris cocked his head.
"I still don't see how any of this connects to you asking for money."
"You're hiding who you are, aren't you?"
Chris started to deny it, then nodded. Once he stated his business, it would come out anyway.
"I am."
"And you're trying to slip away in secret, by the look of it."
"That too. Quick on the uptake."
"As I said a moment ago, we trade in information. We can trade in information about you."
"You said you don't know anything about me. How do you mean to trade that?"
"It's piling up as we speak, isn't it?"
"...!"
"You'll want the very fact that you met me, spoke with me, and made a deal kept secret. So pay."
Chris was honestly impressed.
"Squeezing money out of me before any deal is struck, on the excuse that you'll keep the deal secret. I have to admire the performance."
"You flatter me."
"How much?"
"A hundred."
"A hundred silver? That's highway robbery, and no two ways about it."
"Gold."
Irritation began to creep over him.
"Your greed is getting ahead of you."
The man pointed at the iron door.
"If you don't want to deal, leave."
"And if I leave, you'll put it about that I came looking to make a deal?"
"No. I have a merchant's ethics. I wouldn't start a rumor like that. But if someone came asking whether any suspicious characters had turned up lately, I could take their coin and sell them what I know."
Chris opened his bag, drew out a spatial pouch, and tossed it over. The branch manager examined the pouch where it had landed on the desk.
"It's empty."
"The pouch itself is the payment. Keep it."
"This pouch isn't worth a hundred gold."
Chris threw a second. The branch manager swept both into a drawer.
"Still not worth a hundred gold, but I'll accept it as a gesture of good faith. From this moment, information on you is under seal."
Chris's mouth twisted.
"So now I can deal with an easy heart?"
"You can."
"I want to cross into the Empire. As fast as possible."
A vast mountain range stood between the Empire and the three eastern kingdoms of Grant, Alvar, and Britan. Crossing those mountains took a great deal of time.
"Will a berth on a ship do?"
"I came to Header to take a ship."
"I'll get you one."
"And papers I can use in the Empire."
"Nothing difficult about that."
"The cost?"
"Twenty gold."
"A good deal cheaper than putting a seal on my information."
"That's how highly I rate you. Feel free to take pride in it."
"When can I have the ticket and the papers?"
"Wait here three hours. I'll have them ready for you to take when you leave."
"You work fast."
"There are quite a few people trying to cross in secret, same as you, so we keep things prepared. You'll have to use a name we choose. If that sits wrong, we can make papers in a name and identity of your own, but that takes time. Five days at the least."
"Give me one you've already made. You must be raking it in."
"The tribute we pay upward is so heavy that nothing's left."
He wrote the terms onto a document, rolled it tight, and pushed it into a hole bored through the wall. A soft rush of air, and the paper was gone.
Chris spoke in an offhand tone.
"I have some goods I'd like to move."
"By all means."
He drew a heap of spatial pouches from the bag. At the sight of them, the branch manager whistled.
"What's your trade?"
"Before I took up life as a fugitive, I ran a magic trading house."
"Oh-ho. A magic trading house. You're a wealthy man."
He turned the pouches over in his hands, then let out a murmur of surprise.
"Two of these have something in them."
"Be generous with the price."
He reached in and drew out what they held. Gold coins, silver, gems, spices worth more than gold, statues crusted with jewels, ornamental daggers that looked as if they had crossed into the realm of art—expensive things spilled across the desk in a stream.
"What is all this? Did you knock over a caravan?"
Halfway through the question, the branch manager's eyes lit.
"Senfo...!"
Chris shrugged and said nothing.
"Are you the unknown mage who wiped out the Senfo convoy?"
"No."
The branch manager did not believe him.
"These golden turtles are a specialty of the Senfo trading house."
"Watch my lips. Do they look like the sort that lie?"
"They do."
"You've no eye for people. Don't forget you took two spatial pouches as the price of keeping my request secret."
"I'm starting to think I shouldn't have. Is this all? Nothing more?"
Chris drew several staves from the bag. The branch manager looked at them and licked his lips.
"And even with these, you say you weren't the one who hit them?"
"No."
He was telling the truth. Everything here was plunder Paron had taken after slaughtering the convoy and its mages. Chris had only moved the man's loot.
The branch manager made a show of raising his hands.
"Have it your way. Anything else?"
"There is. I can't trade it."
"Why not?"
"It's a long way off."
"A long way?"
"I buried it, so no thieving wretch could make off with it."
"Can you tell me what you buried?"
"It isn't merchandise. Why ask?"
"I'm curious."
"A black crystal holding spellbooks, spatial pouches, and the hide of a giant insect that breathes flame, lightning, and poison from its mouth."
The branch manager clicked his tongue.
"It isn't a dragon. How does an insect breathe flame and poison? Lie in moderation."
"Look at my lips."
"Enough."
He tallied the value of the goods heaped on the desk, then glanced into the bag.
"Looks like there's more."
"Mana stones. I've no intention of selling those."
He added the rest of it.
"Pay me in mana stones."
A little later the branch manager half-closed his eyes, ran the figures in his head, and spoke.
"I'll give you fifteen top-grade mana stones."
Chris lifted his left fist beside his eye.
"You're blacking my eye a little too hard."
"This branch has only fifteen top-grade stones in storage at the moment. I'll write you a note for the rest."
"You'll take solid goods and hand me paper?"
"Our notes aren't mere paper. They're packed with credit. You can trust them."
Chris began pulling the goods back off the desk.
"Then I'll be taking back whatever you'd pay me with a note."
"Wait!"
"What is it?"
"You're a mage, aren't you?"
"And if I am?"
"Tomorrow night our guild is holding an auction. Rare magical goods will be coming up. You ought to attend."
With that, he pressed a button fixed beneath the desk. Chris answered warily.
"What are you doing?"
"Calling someone. Don't misunderstand."
A moment later the old man who had opened the front door came in. The branch manager looked at him.
"Bring fifteen top-grade mana stones."
The old man took in the valuables stacked high enough to spill off the desk, then looked at Chris's face. He nodded and turned away.
The branch manager wrote out the note, signed it, and pressed a seal glowing with a red light beside the signature. A faint radiance rose from the seal and sank into the paper.
"A note stating that the Black Hand Guild owes you ten top-grade mana stones. You can spend it at the auction house."
Chris looked distinctly unconvinced.
"To my eye, it looks like a trick to avoid handing over the stones."
"Look at my lips. I never lie."
"Your lips don't look as honest as mine... Fine. I'll trust you."