Angelfire | The Whispering Wall #3

Seventy Three: Scars

"I got you something."

Ezra appeared at Arlen's side, holding something in his hand.

"Is it alcohol?"

"No."

"Then I'm not interested."

"Oh, I think you will be." Ezra set the object, wrapped in brown cloth, down on the table with a hollow clunk. Arlen frowned down at it, making no move to unwrap his fingers from around his bottle of nettle wine, until Ezra sighed and undid it himself.

It was a key.

Arlen raised an eyebrow. "S' that for?"

"A warehouse on the edge of the trade district." Ezra looked far too pleased with himself. "An old trader friend of mine agreed to lend it to me while he's not using it. I figured you might be able to, considering your old boss found the other one and also burned your house."

Arlen's jaw tightened; both truths that he didn't like to be reminded of. He'd been living in the tavern cellar for a couple of weeks now, directing his operations from here to try and find out more of what Marick was planning and keep a finger on the pulse of what was going on with the Devils. The things his group brought back were interesting, as far as rumours went, but couldn't be relied upon without evidence. There were rumours that Marick hadn't been seen at the beer hall for days, but that more than one Angel had. One that he had been travelling by portal to who-knew-where. Another that he'd taken a lover, which seemed the least plausible. Arlen had never known the man to be interested in a woman for more than one night.

But the wait was frustrating. Arlen had nothing to aim at. There were no confirmed plans on the table he could oppose to leverage influence with the Devils, and if Marick wasn't calling meetings so that the guild was never all in one place at once, he would have to do something bold. For that he'd need help, only Callan and Skipper had been damnably hard to locate, and though the Nict priest Marcus had made no attempt to conceal his whereabouts from him, Arlen would have to crack before he considered doing something ambitious with only that mad bastard at his back.

Perhaps that was the strategy. Marick wanted Arlen to stall and stay in hiding for so long that he lost all momentum, at which point he could be disposed of quietly, or he wanted to force him into doing something reckless that would potentially backfire and give Marick the perfect excuse to make an example of him.

Or Arlen was slowly driving himself cracked by overthinking things he had no real information about.

"Or I could keep it," Ezra said, making to take the key back. Arlen's hand shot out and pinned Ezra's to the table.

"What trader friend?" he said.

"A son of my father's old circle."

Arlen sneered. "Seems damnably convenient for you to come up with this now." He leaned in. "What's your game, merchant?"

Ezra's nose wrinkled slightly and he glanced at the bottle in Arlen's other hand. "You took me on to get hold of resources, so that's what I'm doing. There's no game."

Arlen let him have his hand back, but didn't break his stare. He'd had an awful lot of time to himself to think things through lately, and he was starting to get the creeping impression that his shitty situation had led him to make some unwise judgements. He'd gone soft. Been too willing to accept help from any who offered it. And it seemed as though Marick always knew what he was going to do two steps before he did it.

"From what I can see, merchant," he said, "you have no reason to be here except that it gets you out of that tavern job you hated. But here's the rub," he held up his walking stick for silence as Ezra started to protest, looking startled, "you are in debt. You weren't indentured, because I received no contract for you, but Marick holds your debts. Significant ones, if the first sob story you sold me was true, and Skipper seems to think you owe him something, too. What are you hoping to win, merch? I ain't paying you, which you've helpfully pointed out. But stuff like this," he held up the key, "keeps showing up. And no one seems to be chasing you."