Afternoon sunlight spilled in through the windows and illuminated the dusty wooden floorboards. Leaning my shoulder against the wall, I peered out onto the street outside. By the other window, Callan and David were doing the same thing while the rest of the guards who had accompanied us were standing silently behind us.
“Are you sure this is the right safe house?” David asked.
“Yes,” Callan answered.
“There are no guards on the street.”
“Of course not. Putting guards on the street would scream to the whole world that there’s something in there worth protecting. All the guards will be upstairs, close to his wife.”
“True. We…”
He trailed off as the door to the safe house was opened. A ripple went through the room. On David’s face, the excitement was clear. The men and women standing behind us in the empty room, however, were harder to read, but I was pretty sure that some of them started like that not out of excitement but rather apprehension. I scanned their faces again before returning my attention to the street where a broad-shouldered man with black hair had just appeared.
Levi Arden closed the door and locked it with efficient moves before starting down the street at a casual pace. No suspicious glances up and down the road. No worried look back at the house. Nothing at all that would betray that this was the safe house where his wife was hiding. Every move was calm and confident. Just like David would expect of a dark mage like Levi.
“Alright, we should go in as soon as possible,” Callan said while we watched Levi walk down the street. “So get your boss here now.”
“Not yet.”
Both Callan and I turned to look at him with eyebrows raised in annoyance.
“We need to make sure that Levi is truly gone before Mr. Gale leaves the stronghold,” David elaborated.
“Have you so little faith in your boss’s battle skills?” I retorted.
“We’re not taking any chances.”
“You’re wasting time.”
“Regardless, until we know for certain that Levi Arden and his people are far away, we will not be moving on the safe house. He has tried to construct traps like this several times in order to kill Mr. Gale. All of them have failed, and this is the reason for that.”
No wonder Levi hadn’t been able to kill Gale. This level of caution was bordering on paranoia.
A low growl of frustration rumbled from Callan’s chest. “Fine.” Pushing away from the wall, he took off towards the door that led out onto the street. “I’ll follow him to make sure that he’s really leaving.”
“If he spots you—”
“I can just say that I wanna talk about the money I’m supposed to be getting for him.”
Without waiting for David to reply, Callan sprinted out the door to follow Levi. David nodded, to himself or to Callan, I wasn’t sure, but then raised his hand. Holding up two fingers, he spun his hand in the air.
Immediately, two of the guards behind us broke off from the rest of the group and jogged out the door. I narrowed my eyes and then leaned closer to the window so that I could see outside again. Callan was sneaking along the road, tailing Levi. And the two guards… were tailing Callan.
I flicked a glance towards David.
He gave me a casual shrug. “Trust issues, remember?”
“I thought we were supposed to be on the same side now.”
For a while, he just continued looking out the window. A summer wind kicked up a small cloud of dust from the street, making it swirl over the stones before settling again.
When Callan and the two guards following him had at last disappeared from view, David shifted his attention back to me. “Do you know how many people have challenged the King of Metal for control over Malgrave and lived to tell the tale?”
“None?”
“One.” He fixed me with a hard stare. “Mr. Gale. And that is because we’re smart and careful. We’re so close to the endgame now, and I will admit, all I want to do is storm straight into that house,” he stabbed a hand towards the building across the street, “right now and get a hold of his damn wife before some other calamity strikes and the chance is lost. But in a game with stakes as high as these, being rash and reckless will get you killed. Which is why we won’t go in until we’re absolutely sure that this isn’t a trap. Even if it means losing the opportunity. We can always try again. But not if we’re dead.”
Again, the reason why Levi had had such trouble assassinating these people was now glaringly obvious.
“Alright,” I answered, and waved a nonchalant hand. “Message received.”
“Excellent.” He paused for a few seconds before saying, “When Mr. Gale gets here, you two will remain here in this building with me until he has entered the safe house. Then we will follow.”
“Alright.”
“Once inside, you and I and some of our other guards will remain on the ground floor to provide back-up while Mr. Gale and everyone else go upstairs to secure the target.”
Impatience shot through me. In order to kill Gale, we needed to be within striking distance of him. And that would have been a lot easier if he wasn’t so damn paranoid.
“Yeah, sure,” I replied, however, since anything other than that would have been suspicious.
Before David could say anything else, a woman appeared at the end of the street. She was walking casually, but she was heading straight towards this door. I stole another glance at David. Was this one of his people that he hadn’t told me and Callan about?
Based on the calm expression on his face, it was indeed someone he knew. I repositioned my body but said nothing as she opened the door and strode inside.
The moment she had closed the door behind her, she dropped the casual act and drew herself up in a stiff posture before bowing her head to David.
“It’s clear, sir,” she said. “I’ve checked the whole perimeter and peeked into every window on street level. I didn’t find a single one of Levi’s people.”
Of course she hadn’t. They were all in a very public place halfway across town.
“Excellent. Be ready to get back to Mr. Gale the moment we know that Levi is otherwise occupied.”
“Yes, sir.”
I watched the brown-haired woman as she moved over to where the rest of the guards were waiting. The fact that David hadn’t mentioned her when we went through the plan was a bit troubling. But our scheme would work anyway.
My pulse thrummed in my ears as I scanned the guards once more.
There were about fifty of them. Fifty. That was a lot more than I had expected David to bring for a stealth mission like this. And they were of course all dark mages. Fifty dark mages, plus the stone mage Trevor Gale and whatever retinue of guards he would bring here too, standing between us and the help we needed from Levi to survive the war against Chancellor Quill and the entire city state of Eldar.
I drew in a long steadying breath, but my heart continued its rapid thumping anyway.
This plan would still work.
It had to work.
Leaning one shoulder against the wall for support, I ran through the plan in my head once more. It would require impeccable timing and no small amount of skill. And a bit of luck too. But as long as there were no unexpected disruptions, as long as everything ran smoothly according to our plan, we could pull this off.
For fuck’s sake, Callan and I had kidnapped Lance Carmichael from his own ball right in the middle of Eldar’s parliament building, among hundreds of guests and constables, and then made it out again. We could do this.
Couldn’t we?
