Four years ago

  Aelfredd stepped out into the harsh light of morning having spent a mostly sleepless night in the back room at Cassie’s House. He worried what Turgeon would think when he awoke alone at their farmstead, but he had bigger concerns for the moment. Hopefully the boy would tend to his chores and not worry too much about his brother’s absence.

  For his part, Aelfredd needed to get rid of this damn book, which meant a visit to that rotten fence, Guerten. It was early, and he’d likely still be abed, but that wasn’t going to stop Aelfredd.

  Before stepping out of the pleasure hall he had taken a large sniff of the powder and used the magic it gave him to amplify his sense of smell. Once outside he inhaled a deep breath, searching for the telltale smell of smoke that would tell him if the Illusionist from the night before was nearby and prepared to cast. Nothing. Safe for now.

  With the cowl of his hood up he made his way as quickly as he could to Cockrun Boulevard (pronounced Co-run), a busy main street in the Flats. He was pleased to find it was already packed with residents of the neighborhood headed to attend the day’s work.

  Despite his amplified senses detecting no sign of a tail, he was fairly confident whoever had sent an illegal magic user to intervene in his job the night before wouldn’t give up quite so easily, and he expected someone would have been waiting to pick up and follow him after leaving Cassie’s. Hoping to lose the tail in the morning crowds grabbing their breakfast and coffee at the numerous cafes and taverns lining the boulevard, Aelfredd plunged into the crowd and determined to get a simple repast of his own. While the powder reduced his appetite somewhat, it had been long enough since his last meal that hunger gnawed at him.

  A bit of time spent sitting in one place with his eye on the crowd should help to identify anyone trying to follow him as well. He settled into the back corner of a cafe, a nice dark spot with a clear view of the well lit street, ordered breakfast, and observed the early morning traffic.

  Everything seemed to be normal for this time of day, the typical daily ebb and flow of the working class citizens of Falkaria City. For most people living this far down in the Flats tonight’s meal would be bought with today’s work. Here, if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat.

  Available work was almost always some form of manual labor: working the docks, loading and unloading merchant vessels, or as porters in warehouses and markets. Knackers counted among the lucky residents of the Flats, if only because they had consistent employment. It was no wonder so many here took to a life of crime.

  For most residents of the Flats whatever was left over after securing dinner would be spent on the night’s pleasures. For the rest, those leftover coins would be spent on breakfast before heading to the docks, warehouses and markets to do it all over again.

  Aelfredd was enjoying the typical simple breakfast fare of the neighborhood: a few slices of stale crusty bread left over from the previous night, slathered in a brown sauce with onion and fried fish bits, also typically left over from the previous night. He’d chosen this particular restaurant because it was known to be high end. Here, they fried the fish bits fresh in the morning for the sauce. From yesterday’s fish.

  Another perk of this restaurant was the previously mentioned table with a view of the boulevard. Aelfredd ate his breakfast at a leisurely pace, which also prevented it from upsetting his stomach, while he observed the traffic on the street outside.

  From the morning crowd one individual he observed stood out to him. Everyone from the Flats wore fairly drab garb, so even though the man who had caught his attention was shorter than most, his bright yellow and red cloak and clothing was enough to catch Aelfredd’s attention. Not the best outfit for tailing a suspicious quickman, but if this was the Illusionist himself he was probably used to being able to disguise himself in whatever clothing would best fit his present environment. The Illusionist was in fact nothing like the illusion of a man he had encountered the night before. This was a short and slight man, his most distinguishing characteristic his unruly bright red hair.

  Interestingly, if he wasn’t doing so it probably meant he had discerned Aelfredd’s ability to easily detect his smoke magic by scent and was currently avoiding using it. Perhaps the Illusionist even had a low internal reserve if he’d avoided ingesting any fuel recently as well. That could potentially work to Aelfredd’s advantage.

  How was he going to lose the tail though? He needed to get to Guerten’s soon, but couldn’t risk leading the Illusionist there too. Could he somehow leave this place without being observed? Last night there had been two thugs as well, so they were likely watching the building’s back door by now, ruling out that option. He could probably take them again, but even in an alley in the Flats a fight like that would draw more attention than he needed.

  Which left only one option: employing his own smoke magic to make himself invisible and walking right out the front door.

  The biggest challenge with using smoke magic in public was the smoke itself. Unlike other fuels, it was highly indiscreet. Even if you were able to mask the visible smoke with smoke from another fire, the smell was so distinct it would overpower the scent of shroud smoke and be detected by even the most distracted observer.

  Aelfredd had a secret weapon though when it came to deploying smoke magic. His mother had long ago taught him a technique for converting the fuel into something that could be eaten. Once converted, the fuel could be used as an ingredient in the preparation of nearly any food. He preferred sweet cookies, and had consumed one before eating breakfast.

  One downside of this method of fuel intake was that it took longer. When smoked – as nature intended – the smoke magic fuel was available almost immediately as magical energy to be used in casting.

  By the time he was done eating breakfast the fuel had converted and he was ready. He stood up, walked to the front of the restaurant while keeping a powder magic amplified eye on the Illusionist across the street, and promptly made himself invisible.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The look of shock on the Illusionist’s face at his disappearance was worth all the trouble he’d gone to. Now Aelfredd knew what his foe really looked like.

  *****

  Once he was invisible, losing his tail had been easy. He’d quickly slipped onto a side street to avoid jostling anyone – in his experience people tended to get a bit weird about running into anything invisible – and took a direct route to Guerten’s. Well, a route as direct as possible in the Flats.

  Part of him was pleased to be visiting the fence’s antique shop during the day instead of at night. Somehow the darkness that shrouded the place at night made the weird array of objects the shop housed seem vaguely sinister.

  Though antique shop owner was an unoriginal cover for a fence, it did make a certain sense. What didn’t add up, and generally threw Guerten’s cover story into doubt, was the location of his shop. Who in the Flats could afford this stuff? Merchants from Topcoin and nobles from the Heights were unlikely to visit this neighborhood, though Guerten’s shop had become a fair draw.

  Many of his customers negotiated their dealings through letters and notes, delivered by servants. Those that did visit the shop typically brought a guard or two to make them feel safe. Guerten’s syndicate connections kept the shop itself safe from thieves.

  Oddly, the shop appeared closed when Aelfredd arrived, with the curtain on the large front window still drawn. As particular as the fence was about his sleep, the man was always an early riser. It was unusual for the shop to be closed at this hour, and Aelfredd was immediately suspicious.

  Prepared to pick the lock to enter, his suspicions were further aroused when the unlocked door opened with a simple twist of the knob.

  He stepped into the shop and quietly called out for the fence, “Guerten?”

  No reply. A quick glance around revealed nothing out of the ordinary, but the shop was always such a mess of strange objects he wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to detect anything out of place if there was.

  A bit louder now, “Guerten?”

  Still no response. A closer inspection of the shop did identify a few items out of place. Despite the chaotic appearance of the shop, Guerten was fastidious about the placement of his treasured inventory.

  A model Klaavan raider ship tipped onto its side on an end table from the Continental War Era. A Summorian headdress with the feathers pointing haphazardly instead of neatly aligned as they belonged. Perhaps most obviously, the chair behind the desk at the back of the shop was backed away from the desk and turned out: Guerten was idealistic about replacing the chair behind the desk whenever he stood up from it, to the point of obsession.

  Something was definitely wrong. Aelfredd took another bump of powder and amplified his sense of smell, taking in the building’s aroma. He had been expecting a lingering trace of smoke, but instead caught the copper metallic scent of blood in the air.

  Borderline in a panic, Aelfredd sought out the well-hidden door in the back of the shop. It wasn’t a secret door like the kind in children’s stories, but it was well hidden behind an array of bookshelves. One had to slip behind the shelves and walk around the back side to reveal a space behind the central shelf that held a small door to the back room.

  It wasn’t a secret door because all of Guerten’s customers who dealt with him in his capacity as a fence for the syndicates knew of its existence: this backroom was where he handled that business.

  As he approached the door he first noticed that it wasn’t even shut. Guerten was extremely careful to always shut and lock this door, even when he was doing business in the room beyond.

  Aelfredd steeled himself and pushed the door wide so he could see the small room beyond. It was dimly lit, lined with shelves of illicitly acquired objects but relatively sparse in furnishing. The room was occupied by a small, low table and a few plush chairs. Slumped in one of those chairs, bleeding out from a vicious wound to his neck was Guerten. He had tried to staunch the bleeding by wadding up a priceless tapestry and pressing it to his throat, but when he passed out from blood loss the compression had been relieved and blood was flowing freely again.

  Well, shit. Aelfredd didn’t consider Guerten a friend or anything, but the fence was the only shot he had at learning more about whatever this job had gotten him caught up in.

  Checking for a pulse, he was relieved to find it was still there, albeit quite faint.

  He needed to get Guerten to a skag healer fast. Ideally one that was awake, which could be a challenge at this hour as it wasn’t even midday yet. Skag magic users were notorious for sleeping in.

  Fortunately for Guerten, and himself by extension, he knew of a healer who lived and worked close to the antique shop, really just across the street in fact. Birds of a feather and all that, the higher end service providers to the syndicate tended to be located close to each other. He would’ve thought the proximity provided safety in numbers too, but that didn’t work out for Guerten so it didn’t seem an appropriate thought at the moment.

  With a bit of powder to boost his strength he was able to easily lift the near-corpse onto his shoulder and make his way quickly back out of the shop and across the street to the healer’s shop. Aelfredd didn’t know this healer personally but he had heard Guerten refer to his neighbor as “that Summorian skag witch with the spice shop,” so he assumed the healer was both a Summorian and a spice dealer and was able to easily locate her shop across the street.

  Unfortunately, as he had feared she was not yet awake for the day. His pounding and yelling at her door had likely awoken half the block – so they could peer out of their windows and see him carrying a corpse over his shoulder – by the time she opened the door and regarded him with a scowl.

  As far as witches went, this had to be about the most attractive one Aelfredd had ever seen. Her skin was the pale white of all skag magicians, but her face didn’t bear the tell tale gauntness he had expected. She was hale and healthy, with a glow on her delicate features amplified by their darkness: her thick, braided hair was as black as he expected her soul to be and her eyes were wells of deep darkness he was in danger of becoming lost in.

  She was having none of that, quickly taking in the fact that Guerten’s near-corpse was bleeding all over her doorstep.

  “Get out of here with that corruption, I want nothing to do with the meat sack you’re carrying.”

  He couldn’t be sent away, Guerten didn’t have much time. “Please, I need your help,” he pleaded, “This man must live. I’ll owe you, whatever you ask.”

  As expected, that offer appealed to her. “Are you who I think you are? And is that who I think it is?”

  “If you think I’m the quickman known as the Red Death, yes. And if you think this is your neighbor Guerten, then yes again.”

  She seemed to be considering his offer. “I’d really rather not save that idiot’s life, but I wouldn’t mind being owed a favor by the likes of you.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I’m just as likely to kill him as to carry him home after I get the chance to talk to him. But I need to talk to him first.”

  “Yeah, that figures. Fine, but get inside before the neighbors start getting ideas. Well, worse ideas."