CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A Plan That Exists

 

Summer in Sagemont was in all ways the opposite of its winter. While this may sound obvious, the reality of experiencing it was another matter. It was incredibly hot and just as humid, and the two combined created a hell that diminished my love of Sagemont considerably. I could not recall the last time I wasn’t covered in perspiration. Even the air felt like it was made of hot sweat. I would walk out of the lake after a cool swim and be covered again before I reached the tavern. Ubrain, while hot, was never humid. I hated summer in Sagemont.

“I hate summer,” I muttered.

“You also hated winter and spring,” Marcus said. “I’d say there’s a good chance you won’t like autumn much, either.”

Marcus and I were sitting bare-chested at the Bleeding Wolf, attempting to stay cool. We both wore our histories written on our chests. Marcus was covered in long clean scars, marks left by sword practice and his time in the rebellion. Mine were more disturbing. Badly healed burns and wounds inflicted with the purpose of causing pain. I also had a dark tattoo on my right shoulder, a spiral shaped into an eye—the icon of Svyn. I had received it when I’d completed my assassin training. Angus had known nothing of such matters, so he had sent me to train with a guild of assassins he had dealings with. The guild, the Sons of Svyn, followed Svyn exclusively and carried his mark.

Sheets of paper covered the table in front of me, numbers scratched all over. We’d been discussing our plans for the Harvest Festival, a mere month away. As the event neared, these discussions had become more frequent and more heated. The rift I’d created had not been bridged over the previous months, but still, I was glad to have him with me on my quest.

“I don’t see how I can calculate this,” I said. “I can make a good guess, but if I’m wrong…”

“If you make the dose too strong, everyone dies,” Marcus said.

“But if it’s too weak, then we die. I know which option I prefer.”

“Figure it out, or it doesn’t happen,” Marcus said. “I will not let you kill hundreds of innocent people.”

“Innocent? You are talking about the upper echelon of the empire. If they died, it would solve a lot of problems.”

“You can be cold-blooded Saul, and stupid to boot. Don’t you realize how fast those positions would be filled? And probably by people even hungrier for power than the ones they’d be replacing. Is it not enough that you killed the princes? And dozens of nobles? I won’t let you kill more.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “You’re going to sit there and defend your beloved emperor Solas and his cronies after what he has done to our families? What in the hells were you rebelling against if you are so happy with the status quo?”

Marcus clenched and unclenched his fists. “I hate to even justify that with an answer. But the purpose of the rebel movement was to seek change for the people, not to unseat the emperor. And understand this—while he has royally shafted the ruling elite, Solas has had a gentle hand with the common people. At least, for an expanding empire at constant war.”

“You seem to be forgetting how many of the common people I have butchered in the name of the empire, many of them your people.”

I knew the punch was coming, but I did not see it. It knocked me clean off my chair, and I hit the ground hard. But I was no stranger to pain, so I stood and spat blood onto the floor, deliberately spattering some onto Marcus’s bare feet. I sat back down on my chair and took a swig of ale.

“You sang a different tune in the dungeon,” I said.

“I have had more time to think on it, time to cool down,” Marcus said. “If we did it your way, we would be no better than those we kill.”

“Fine, then tell me who you would have me kill instead.”

“No one,” Marcus said.

“Well, that just plain doesn’t work, Marcus,” I said, a thin smile on my face. “I have no way of knowing how much of the sedative it will take to knock them out for long enough. I have only ever used it to kill. Simply making them drowsy will do us no good. So at the very least, we need to test it out on a smaller group. I very much doubt anyone would volunteer for this experiment.”

“I’ll do it,” Marcus said after a long pause.

“No, I won’t permit it. Besides, you are a big bastard. You don’t make for a good test subject. Think of something else,” I said. Marcus picked at his fingernails but did not offer any suggestions. I sighed. “Okay, how about the lovely people at the gambling den? Have you grown to love them, too?”

After a long silence, Marcus looked up. “Fine. If it has to involve a test, then the gambling den will have to do. But I see two problems. Firstly, how do we get in? The Gods know they won’t just let us in there, and they definitely won’t drink anything we served them. Secondly, this will need to be a controlled test. How will you measure the effectiveness of your poison?”

I thought on it for a moment, tapping a finger on my tankard. “Here is what I have in mind. Neysa is fantastic at making disguises. We walk in during one of their nights of business with a barrel of ale, disguised as different men. We tell them that we’ve been hired by a local brewer to do product testing, and ask if anyone would be willing to try some free ale.”

“Okay, that might work,” Marcus said. “But how do you propose we come up with an accurate dosage?”

“You know those cheap tankards we bought from the dock? The ones we can’t get rid of?”

“I thought we did get rid of them. Haven’t seen them for weeks,” Marcus said.

“I put them in the attic so that they wouldn’t be used by accident,” I said. We’d bought several crates of very cheap tankards from a desperate merchant some weeks past. It turned out that they were defective, and that the handles frequently broke off after just a few uses. “We add a spot of paint to the tankards, five of each color, and dose them at different rates. One drop of sedative in the white ones, two in the green, and so on. We start with the white tankards, the lowest dose, and pass them around. We then use a few tankards with no sedative, providing us with some time to observe them. If it’s too low, we move to the green, and repeat the process. Using five tankards will give us a good idea of how different people react to the same dosage. Unless the first dose is lethal, no one should die. Any objections?”

“No, I can live with that,” Marcus said. “My biggest concern would be that Neysa’s disguises may not be good enough for someone of my size to look like another man.”

“We’ll discuss it with her later. I need a swim.”

 

Later that night, we approached the edge of town, and I found it hard to keep from smiling. Neysa’s hand with makeup was something to be seen, the result very believable, but her choice of disguise for Marcus was hilarious. At least, I thought so, but Marcus did not seem to share my opinion. I looked like an old man, perhaps in my sixties, with a walking stick, a faded brown robe and a wrinkly face. She even went as far as to add mottled ink to my scalp once she shaved it. Marcus… was a hunchbacked giant. While he was the same height as usual, the pronounced hump made it look as though he’d be another head taller were it not for the affliction. Marcus was pushing the barrel cart in front of him, and I hauled several crates of tankards.

I was covered in sweat beneath the robe, and I hoped that it would not make any of the makeup run. Neysa had assured me that actors got just as sweaty on the stage. Marcus was scowling. He was doing that a lot as of late, and a part of me missed the perpetually cheerful man I had met so many months ago. Another part of me felt that it justified my own worsening mood. The pressure of our planned heist, the schism in our relationship, and the pressure of running a successful business were taking their toll on us. We were making an incredible amount of money for two men so disinterested in wealth.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “We need to hire people to work the tavern when we leave. There are probably a half dozen positions we need to fill. We have been doing too much. We will be leaving soon anyway.”

“But who?” Marcus asked.

“Not sure. We can put a job posting on the noticeboard by the port. That thing has been bare since we last advertised.”

 

We passed the newly constructed train station. After many months, the purpose behind the construction in the forest had come to light. The project had been much delayed thanks to Kaleb’s continuing efforts to free the slaves constructing it. The cost of constantly bringing in more slaves had gotten too much for the emperor, so he had relented and hired laborers to do the work. With his work complete, Kaleb had finally left for the oasis himself.

While I hated that slave labor was used to construct it, I had to admit, it was impressive. It consisted of long metal rails, called tracks, that extended from Morwynne to Sagemont, and it was constantly getting longer. On these rails, he’d placed specially built wagons and carriages, with metal wheels shaped to stay on the tracks.

To pull these contraptions, he’d trained three-horns, the massive reptiles we’d first encountered in the imperial warehouse. The wagons and carriages were hitched together, and depending on the number and what they contained, it took as many as ten of the reptiles to pull the train. It was not fast, but an impressive amount of goods could be moved that way. Most trips even included passenger wagons, and nobles flocked to Sagemont just for the novelty, though the price of such a trip was steep. Only two dozen such trips had been completed, but many more would follow.

 

Marcus and I soon arrived at the gambling den. There were a few groups of men standing outside, but all conversation stopped as we arrived. While we looked nothing like our usual selves, Neysa sure as hells had not make us look inconspicuous. We probably made quite the sight—an old man and a hunchbacked giant. We approached the two big men on the door, and they took a step toward us with their arms crossed.

“One of ’em brewing places ’as hired us to serve this ’ere ale,” Marcus said, tapping the barrel. “They ain’t none too ’appy with some’un else stealin’ their business. So they made this stuff to compete wid’dem Bleeding Wolf peoples. Want people to see if they like it any. We reckoned we’d come see the people dat mattered… think they’d want some free piss?” Marcus gestured at the door. The groups outside affirmed their willingness to sample the ale and approved heartedly of the price. The doormen looked suspicious, but they cast a wary eye at the boisterous men now surrounding us, then held the door open to let us through.

 

The smell of the place and of those inside overwhelmed me as I walked in. The stink of filthy bodies, rotting meat and general desperation was rank. It was brighter inside than on our last visit, but the torches did not help the ambiance of the place in the slightest. The fighting pit was hidden from sight by a wall of men.

The few woman in the place—I would not call them ladies—were not there for the fighting pit. They lined the walls or sat in the laps of men at the bar. They nonetheless took part in a different sort of fight: a fight for attention, a fight for coin. An older man, gut hanging out of his shirt, had one hand on a tankard and the other up the skirt of a blank-eyed girl. These were the cheap whores that would line the damp alleys of a larger town. Prostitutes in general disgusted me, and while I recognized their right to choose how they made their living, I could not respect the choice they made for themselves. And the type that sold themselves to the likes of these men… I could not imagine how desperate one would need to be to come to that decision. I supposed that, having been raped by my former master, I could not accept that anyone would throw themselves at the mercy of these types. Their similarities to Angus were too great. The crescendo of the mass around the pit spoke of a coming end to the fight, with the shrill calls of the reptiles nearly lost in the cheers.

 

We set ourselves up in a corner, filling several tankards with nothing but ale. During our previous visit I had failed to notice the statues of Eriel’s handmaidens in the corners of the building. Had I not been to the temples of Eriel before, I might not have recognized the disfigured statues for what they were. Eriel, the goddess of water, was important to my people, who were always in need of rain.

The fight was soon over, and judging by the din of those around the pit, I assumed that an underdog had taken the fight. The barman came around first, asking pointed questions about what the hells we thought we were doing stealing his business. When we explained the situation to him, he admitted his relief. It turned out that he was running low on ale, as “those arseholes” at the Bleeding Wolf were charging an arm and a leg for a barrel. He was now relying on the few taverns that had not been bought out, and he was running low that night. These men would not take kindly to being denied their drink.

The men from outside lined up first. I found it amusing that men such as these would revert to such schoolboy habits as forming an orderly line. The first man had a weather-beaten face, a long, braided beard and so many earrings that they caused his ears to sag. The sailor, as I assumed he was, took a big swig from his tankard as he moved from the line, grunting his approval. As the filled tankards disappeared from Marcus’s hands, I started filling the white tankards. These were soon in the hands of four men and one whore.

A cheer went up, signaling the end to another fight. A large black man stepped up with a crossbow and shot the remaining reptile. Another jumped down into the pit and soon returned, dragging two bloodied reptiles behind him by their tails. Marcus continued pouring the normal ale, and I kept an eye on those with the white tankards. At first there was no sign that the sedative had had any effect. After a minute or two, all of those except one—the whore, I should note—were blinking more rapidly and occasionally shook their heads. The effect did not last long, so I found myself filling the green tankards. When the recipients of these had drained their vessels, all five fell where they stood or sat, separated by little more than a minute.

“You’ve spiked our drinks,” one man shouted when his friend’s face met the floor, tankard shattering. However, those around him soon mocked him, pointing at their own tankards. “Your mate just ain’t got the head for a serious ale. A bit of a lady, I reckon. Even Evonne is still standing,” one said, pointing at the whore who was doing her best attempt at a curtsy, graceful as a pig on ice. In the meantime, we kept pouring and the men kept drinking. Those horizontally inclined test subjects got up, one after the other, when about five minutes had passed. That wouldn’t do.

I next poured five red tankards, each with three drops of sedative at the bottom. At this point everyone had been served, and many were lining up for a second round. I took care to hand the red tankards only to those who had not “volunteered” previously. We served these to three men and two woman, though one of the women had a rather pronounced Adam’s apple. These, too, dropped to the ground after a couple of minutes. We continued to pour untouched ale, but those on the floor did not get up. The crowd hardly seemed to notice, and one man propped his foot on a floored man’s arse. I went to check on them when a quarter hour had passed, but they were all still alive and breathing. The ale ran out an hour later, so we packed up our things.

We asked the remaining crowd what they thought of the ale, and a loud cheer filled the room, distracting even those around the pit. I was not sure how much of their enthusiasm was for the ale as opposed to the price.

 

We were soon wheeling the empty barrel back through the streets, the crescent moon lighting the way. It was well short of curfew, but the streets were empty.

“That went better than I could have hoped for,” I said. “I honestly expected things to go tits up.”

“You could have expressed your doubts before this foolishness,” Marcus said.

“And give you the chance to back out? No, what’s done is done. I have what I need. We can now calculate how much of the sedative to add to each of the barrels marked for the toasts.”

“Marked?” Marcus asked.

“It was in that letter, remember? Different barrels, marked in different colors.”

“Gods-damned empire has rules for everything, even getting pissed,” Marcus said.