Fire wine was a strong distilled dwarven spirit. I couldn’t claim to have any desire to drink something that would literally catch fire when lit. Regardless, I sank back into the couch.
“Alia, you’ve heard the news, right?” Jaysha asked in a low voice.
I gave a small nod. “Yes.”
“Kushum is dead. The Reezan did it.”
Kushum, the Munza’s elder of the west, who had acted as a middleman between the Munza, the Hogroth, and myself, had been killed in an attack by the Reezan mafia. There were agreements between the various organizations, and this wouldn’t be sufficient to void them, but Jilgan—who had known Kushum personally—looked very displeased.
That was why the town had been so tense. Fighting could break out at any moment.
Why had the Reezan—who ran the pleasure district and accepted all races—picked a fight with the heavily armed Munza? Ron and I had tried to gather intel, but the reason remained unclear. The Reezan had already captured ten of the perpetrators and executed them publicly to set an example, but no one had taken that act as genuine.
“Scapegoats, that’s all,” Jaysha said. “I don’t have time to waste on a farce. The question is, what are they plotting? Say, Alia, did you notice anything amiss?”
“I’ve been wondering where the guild’s dark elves went,” I said.
Jaysha’s eyes narrowed slightly. The guild was led by dwarves but accepted members of all races—yet not a single dark elf was anywhere to be seen.
“They vanished a few days before the hit on Kushum,” she explained. “The few still around are young and were born here.”
So the stronger dark elves—the nonlocal ones—had all vanished. Where to, and why?
As if to signal that the time for conversation was past, Jaysha began to chug the fire wine straight from the bottle. Jilgan gave me a silent nod, and I stood to leave.
Just as I was about to step out of the room, Jaysha’s voice echoed behind me. “Beware the evil race.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Demons. Evil race. Those terms were slurs for dark elves, but here—where dark elves mingled with everyone else—they weren’t really used. So why had Jaysha chosen to do so? I could make an educated guess, but couldn’t be certain.
Back on the street, I pulled up my cloak once more, erased my presence, and went about buying what I needed. Cloth, rare alchemical materials, food—but not the cheap, sandy grain the townsfolk usually ate. My best option was to trade with small merchant caravans passing through town. They were wary folk, and we weren’t experienced enough to travel with them, but sometimes they had decent food and materials on offer.
I bought a batch of grain and salt that, while expensive, wasn’t gritty with sand. I also got a large sack of millet and tucked it all under my cloak and inside Shadow Storage before leaving town.
A few presences were tailing me. Maybe they were Hogroth? Kiluri? But they seemed clumsy, almost. I figured they were small-time thugs looking for an easy score. Anyone who knew of my strength wouldn’t have sent pursuers Rank 3 or below, and I was skilled enough now to easily sense even a Rank 4 scout. Following me was pointless.
Still, to be safe, I ran across the desert and made a wide detour that took half an hour before circling back toward town and suppressing my presence as I approached a crumbling watchtower on the outskirts.
No one ever came near the old stone structure, which had been here since the town was first built. It looked unstable, but I knew it wasn’t going to collapse.
“Welcome back, Alia.”
As I slipped past the ragged cloth serving as a door, a young dogfolk child, alerted by the greeting, wagged his tail and clung to my leg. Elena, who had been playing with the dwarven child, looked up at me and smiled warmly.
“Hi, Lena.”
For now, this place was our best shot at escaping this town.
✦ ✦ ✦
In the darkness of the desert night, six people met in secrecy. On one side stood three Krus men, and facing them, three figures hid their forms under cloaks.
“As arranged, then.”
“How far has your main force come?” asked one of the Krus. “If it takes too long...”
“No cause for concern. Yet. Depending on how things go, that may change.”
“Hey! We trusted you—”
“We’re ready for our next move. You wouldn’t want to miss out on the opportunity, would you?”
“As long as you keep your word.”
“Which we will. But you get it, don’t you?”
“Y-Yes, but...”
For the three Krus, this was a golden opportunity. They’d already discussed the plan itself at length—but it was dangerous for any one faction within Cutlass to go up against all the others. They’d nevertheless agreed to cooperate with this plan because, in a stroke of luck, they’d managed to eliminate one of the elders of a rival faction, the Munza. The gang’s security had also been temporarily compromised by the death of a Rank 4 warrior who had been a cornerstone of their military prowess.
Still, why had such careful opportunists assassinated an opposing faction’s elder? Despite having ordered the hit, they hadn’t so much as considered directly targeting a Munza elder before this. They’d only taken action because a cause had presented itself, one that made the risky assassination worth it. It was serendipitous that the Munza had been weakened, but even without that factor, the cause was important enough that they would’ve chanced it.
These meetings were always held outside the bounds of the town. One of the participants, a young woman who had been present each time, quietly removed her hood before the hesitant Krus trio, exposing her youthful face to the night air.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll go perfectly.”
The moment the girl spoke, her eyes gleamed bright red. Anxiety disappeared from the three Krus’s faces, as though they’d been hypnotized.
After that, the group split, and the girl—leader of a vampire clan but currently far away from her companions—gazed at the distant town. Baring her sharp fangs, she walked into the dark night.