The guild
Magnus bobbed unhappily, obviously understanding he clenched hundreds or thousands of beings in his hands, not realizing he clenched his own as well.
If he conspires to rebellion, I'll slay him now, I swear by the Night Angels. I serve just the Oxen presently. And myself. Always myself.
" May ages unborn forgive me," Magnus Bond mumbled, tears glistening in his eyes.
"But I will not commit murder for what may be, Leo. I cannot. I will vow fealty."
The Rudeboy skidded the daggers back into their sheaths, dismissing the dual sentiments of relaxation and discomfort he felt.
It's that damned woman. She's wrecked me. She'd wrecked everything.
Smith saw the lure from fifty strides off and strolled right into its teeth. The sun was anyway an hour from rising and the only people on the curling streets of the Lowdys were merchants who'd plunged asleep where they shouldn't have and were trotting home to their wives.
The guild—Black Dungeon from the guild glyphs he'd passed—was concealing around a slight choke point in the aisle where guild rats could spring up to plug both edges of the lane and also strike from the downward rooftops.
He had encompassed a bad right knee and yanked his robe tight around his shoulders, the hood jerked low over his countenance. As he staggered into the ambush, one of the aged children, a huge as they dubbed them, leapt into the aisle ahead of him and sounded, wielding a worn blade. Guild rats encircled the Rudeboy.
" Clever," Ryan let out.
"You maintain a lookout before dawn when most of the other guilds are dozing, and you're eligible to lunge a few bags who've been out all night whoring. They don't wish to clarify any scrapes from combatting to their wives, so they deliver their coins. Not bad. Whose notion was that?"
" Flynn's," a huge mumbled, edging past the Rudeboy.
"Shut up, Chad!" the guild head asserted.
The Rudeboy glanced at the little boy on the rooftop. He was clasping a rock above, his pale blue sights intent, ready. He gawked familiar. " Oh, now you've offered him away," Ryan mumbled.
" You keep quiet, too!" the guild head let out, trembling the blade at him.
"Hand over your satchel or we'll eradicate you."
"Marian," a black guild rat asserted, " he called them ' bags.' A dealer wouldn't realize we call ' 'em that. He's Oxen."
"Shut up, Nathan! We require this." Marlian puffed and spat blood.
"Just offer us your—"
"I don't have the time for this. Move," Ryan mumbled.
"Hand it—"
The Rudeboy darted onward, his left hand twirling Marlian's blade hand, snatching the sabre, and his torso spinning in. His right elbow slammed against the guild head's temple, but he yanked the whack so it wouldn't kill.
The battle was over by the time the guild rats winced.
" I explained I don't have time for this," Ryan confessed. He threw back his hood.
He realized he was nothing outstanding to glimpse at. Slam suit his appropriation. Despite how skinny and sharp-featured, with dark blonde fur and a wispy blond beard over lightly pockmarked cheeks. But he might have had three heads from the manner the kids dwindled back.
" Ryan Smith," Chad mumbled.
Rocks clanged to the ground.
" Ryan Smith," the name enacted through the guild rats in surges. He saw anxiety and terror in their sights. They'd simply strived to mug a legend.
He grinned. "Sharpen this. Only a novice allows his sword to rust."
He hurled the blade into a trench coagulate with sewage. Then he strolled through the crowd. They scattered as if he might slay them all.
Flynn gawked his pace into the early morning clouds, vanishing like so many other expectations into the sinkhole of the Lowdys.
Ryan Smith was everything Flynn wasn't. He was strong, dangerous, optimistic, and fearless. He was like a god. He'd peeked at the entire guild decked against him—even the bigs like Chad and Marlian and Rat—and he'd been fascinated.
Fascinated!
Sometimes, Flynn vowed. He didn't relatively dare only speculate the entire thought, lest Smith grasps his premise, but his total torso craved for it.
Someday.
When Smith was distant sufficiently off not to notice, Flynn followed.
The bashers patrolling the Nine's subsurface section viewed Ryan sourly. They were twins and two of the hugest men in the Oxen. Each had a lightning latch tattooed down his forehead.
" Weapons?" one mumbled.
"Lefty," Ryan muttered in greeting, withdrawing his sword, three sabres, the darts strapped to his wrist, and several minor glass balls from his other arm.
"I'm Lefty," the other one asserted, patting down Smith energetically.
"You mind?" Ryan inquired.
" We both infer if I wished to slay anyone in there I could, with or without weapons."
Lefty redden. " Why don't I smash this pretty sword—"
" What Lefty means is, why don't you delude not to be a menace, and we'll feign we're the purpose," Brad asserted.
"It's simply a tradition, Smith. Like inquiring somebody how they are when you don't care."
" I don't ask."
"I was sorry to hear about Vonda," Brad mumbled.
Ryan stopped cold, a pike wrenching through his stomach.
"Really," the big man asserted. He clenched the door open. Peeked at his brother.
Part of Ryan realized he should assert something chopping or jeopardizing or humorous, but his tongue was sluggish.
"Um, Master Smith?" Brad mumbled. Recuperating, Ryan strode into the Nine's conference compartment without hoisting his sights.
It was a territory to stimulate panic. Etched from ebony fibreglass, an outlet monopolized the compartment. Nine chairs sat on the forum. A tenth chair sat above them like a throne. There was just a bare floor facing the chairs. Those the Nine questioned would stand.
The section was a tight rectangle, but it was intense. The ceiling was so elevated it vanished in the dark. It conveyed to those queried the impression of being scrutinized in hell. That the chairs, barricades, and even the floor were etched with slight gargoyles, Dungeons, and people, all yelling, worked nothing to rejuvenate the outcome.
But Ryan walked in with a susceptible acquaintance. The dusk clenched no anguish for him. The shadows saluted his eyes and hid nothing from him. At least that much is left me.
The Nine had their cowls on, except for Momma J, however, most understood there was no concealing their personalities from Ryan. Above them, the Shinga, Pon Dradin, crouched on his throne. He was as quiet and silent as usual.
"Is the wife dead?" Corbin Fishill inquired.
He was a fashionable, gorgeous man with prestige for brutality, particularly toward those children in the guilds heIperated. The giggle his lips might have aroused somehow wilted under the ever-present resentment on his countenance.
"Things aren't as you anticipated," Ryan let out.
He bestowed his statement briefly. The king would soon perish, and the men whom the Oxen had worried would strive to succeed him would not mash their claim. That vacated the throne to Duhan Gunder, who was extremely shaky to dare intrude with the Oxen.
"I would suggest," Ryan announced, " that we make the prince promote General Spencer to lord general. Spencer would restrain the prince from centralizing his superiority, and if Spartador makes any move—"