Caught in the Web

Synopsis

Orvayne’s warning had been that the old Ten Lashes tavern was still standing on purpose: the guard wanted the people who used it, not the building. The two women who keep it run messages and hide people for the Valiant Few, and had no idea they were the reason. The party went in disguised and lightly armed (Koa left the greatsword behind), because three armed strangers walking in together would have tripped the watchers before a word was said. They counted them on the way: a cloaked shape lying in an alley, a face at a second-floor window.

The barkeep cleared her own room with a long-dead rat and a story about an infestation, waived every tab, and shut the door. Then the warning landed badly. The two are a couple, and they split down the middle: one would not abandon the work, the other would not lose her. What broke it was Mikhail putting Gwenivere Velmont’s own flight in front of them, and what Beltran has already proved he is willing to do. They left for the Crack that night with a party wagon loaded to the boards, their good drink riding on top of it, which arrived in the refugee camp as the best news it had had in weeks. At the women’s request, Casper stayed behind to watch the empty shop.

The ruins were a worse homecoming. Someone was lying in the rubble a few feet from the party’s concealed door. Aldo dropped down beside him (so, what are we looking for?), and three worshippers at a nearby shrine came jogging over to see and were asleep before they arrived. The man talked. He and his fellows belonged to the Silver Web, the guild that holds the ruins, sent by a half-orc named Tony to look the party over and, if they proved a problem, to solve it. He put the guild at something over twenty. All four went into the cages.

At dawn the party opened the door and Mikhail took a heavy crossbow bolt through the thigh. Above them on the rubble stood two crossbowmen and a third man with a sword, and beneath the sword was Casper: unconscious, bleeding, an alchemist’s fire held over him. Drop your weapons or he dies. Nobody dropped anything. Aldo and Koa promised the men on the ledge worse than dying, Mikhail’s magic doubled the heavy crossbowman over in laughter he could not stop, and the standoff came apart. The one who talked the rest down turned out to be Foren, the same Silver Web man who bought Mikhail’s tailored trousers during the ruins heist. Tony had sent him to collect the four men who never came back. He traded them for one hostage and the crossbow, and promised the leadership would come and talk.

In the hours between, the party had the argument it had been circling for months. Aldo has now watched murderers walk away twice; the disguises are burned, the hideout is known, and they are in someone else’s war again. Koa will not kill men who have surrendered, and said so.

Serra came in the afternoon, the guild’s information-broker, patient, precise, and quite clear she was not there to be liked. She apologized for the morning and put a proposal on the table: Beltran’s extortion is heavy-handed enough to be eating the guild’s own takings, and a change of the guard would suit them both. The council can outvote the Grayeras: his parents hold two seats of some seven, and the rest are united only by greed. She gave them the bank: Sarro Rashid lost it to Johanka Materai, a blackmailer of long standing who now runs it in the Grayeras interest. They gave her Daric’s crew, who took Rashid’s family, and told her Beltran had been the man above the Ten Lashes and hunts them for wrecking it. She was embarrassed not to have known.

The terms were a few days rent-free while Casper mends, the Silver Web covering it as apology for having half-killed him, then rent, or a favor owed to Dresk for a better-placed house downtown. One week to decide, and Foren is the man they talk to now. She gave them Naevora Grayeras like a woman handing over something worthless: a Merrick marriage refused loudly at a ball, a family that calls her frail and keeps her out of sight because she cannot hold a secret, and an address that is still the estate where the meetings happen.

That night Koa told the others what he had done before he met them (a man killed for vengeance, an old councilman killed in temper) and what he has begun to believe the Martyr wants of him.