Industry & Intrigue (55 page)

Kendric
k guffawed at her crude remark and
Tel grinned. “That’s something I never thought I’d be picturing,”
he chuckled. He stepped up to the door and knocked loudly, three
times. “Have faith Agent Badenoch. The House of Blades hides in
plain sight.”

T
he door opened, revealing a tall woman
with pale skin. “Yes?” she asked in a rasping voice.

Tel produced three
metallic passes and
handed them to her. She glanced down and took them into her hands.
Her hand moved behind the door and there was a small burst of
light.

“
You have valid tickets. Before
you go down, please place all weapons into the storage lockers to
your left. They have keys attached, you can take with
you.”

The woman stepped aside and Tel entered
first. He deposited his weapons into a locker and took a key. Fiona
did the same. She didn’t like leaving her gun and dagger behind,
but Tel had warned them that the House of Blades enforced their
rules ruthlessly to ensure thievery was kept to a
minimum.

Kendrick dumped his bag
into the locker,
having to push and squeeze to get it all the way in. After he took
his key, the woman led them down the corridor to a grated door. She
opened it and let them pass.

“
The stairs
are steep, so be careful. Once
you have reached the bottom door, speak the words ‘Ceannaich
Fallain’ and you will be allowed to enter,” she said.

Fiona followed Tel
down
, with
Kendrick close behind her. The woman had been right about the
stairs, she slipped several times, the shoddy lighting not helping.
They finally reached the bottom. Water dripped down the stone walls
and moths fluttered around the only lamp. There was another door
here, a hefty looking stone one. There was an elaborate metallic
knocker. Tel rapped on it, the sound echoing throughout the
staircase.

Fiona heard the
grating sound of
rock moving and a small circular hole appeared above the
knocker.

“
Password?” a gruff voice
called out.

“
Ceannaich Fallain,” said Tel.
The words were Old Alkonnic and sounded strange coming from Tel’s
high pitched, elven voice.

The door shuddered and
started moving.
Light poured into the dim passage. Tel stepped in first, with Fiona
and Kendrick following. After they were through, the door closed
back tightly. A muscular orc in a black and white shirt grunted as
he pushed it shut and turned to them when he was done.

“
I presume you know the rules
already
, so
I won’t lecture you,” he said. “Be warned, if you cause trouble,
you’ll be answering to me personally.” He picked up a piece of wood
in his right hand and squeezed. The wood cracked and snapped in
half.

Fiona ignored his
arrogant display of
strength and turned her gaze to the black market they were standing
in. The door they had exited stood at the top of a long flight of
stairs leading down to hundreds of small buildings and stalls. She
could see figures moving between them, it was certainly
busy.

The
y were in a massive underground
cavern below the streets of Longhaven. Whether it was natural or
man-made, she didn’t know, but what the House of Blades had done
with it was impressive. At first she had thought it was daylight
that had poured into the corridor, but now she could see she had
been wrong. Far above their heads were large electric lights. They
must have been powerful, to simulate daylight.

At
random points in the cavern were
massive stalagmites taller than buildings. The market extended up
alongside them. Spread out between the mountains of granite, the
marketplace was an intricate lattice of wooden walkways that hurt
her eyes trying to take it all in. There had to be hundreds of
levels and walkways intersecting and curving around each other. She
could make out buildings along each of them, more shops. It was
more impressive than Tel could ever have prepared her
for.

“
So how do we find the
A
rm in all
of this?” she asked him and waved her hand at the huge
market.

“
The Arm use only the
finest weapons.
Most of what is down there is common or of poor quality,” he said,
pointing at the lower level. “The higher up we go, the more
specialized the stores. There are a number of elite vendors that
sell only the best of whatever one is after. The most well-balanced
swords, the newest gun designs, even Huntington
electro-rods.”

Fiona tried not to let the surprise show
on her face at hearing that. “How in the hells did they get those?
Only the Imperial Army has access to them.”

“
That’s why
it’
s called
a black market,” replied Tel. “Come on, once we get to the main
market floor, we still have to make our way through all of these
crowds.” He descended the stairs and she followed.

It took them ten minutes to
reach the main floor of the market and now that
Fion
a could
see it up close, it looked like the bottom of a natural cavern,
though it obviously been smoothed out, to make it easier to walk
on.

Tel led them through the
crowds. It was slow going and it was a rough crowd. A few times
Fiona thought someone was going t
o attack her, but they settled for giving
her a malicious look. The guards in distinctive black and white
uniforms were alert and watchful, no one wanted to do anything to
attract their attention.

They eventually reached the
middle
of
the cavern. Looking back she could barely make out the stairs they
had come down, although there were other sets of stairs around the
cavern. She guessed they led to similar hidden
entrances.

They were standing below of
one
of the
huge stalagmites which looked to be the main intersection for all
of the upper walkways. Tel continued to lead them through the
stairs and walkways for a long time.

Fiona was panting when he
finally stopped. She looked at
Kendrick, his face was dripping with
sweat.
He
needs to get away from his experiments and into the training rooms
more often
.

Tel ran his hand though his
golden hair. “There, that wasn’t too bad.” He pointed at a large
cream colored building
. “Right there. That is the most expensive and
exclusive operation in the entire House of Blades.” Fiona looked.
The sign carved on the front of the building said,
Solamh’s Fine
Acquisitions
.

“
Anytime the Arm need something
rare
that
they can’t acquire themselves, I can guarantee you they’ll come
here for it” explained Tel.

“
So we wait until he closes up,
then we make him g
ive us his Arm customer details?” asked Fiona.

“
Ha!” sai
d Tel. “That’ll be the day.
First, he won’t close up shop. The House of Blades operates all
hours. Second, Solamh will have significant security measures in
place and we gave up our weapons upon entering,
remember?”

Fiona cursed the rules of this
place.

“
Third
, even if we were somehow able to get
to him; the House’s guards would prevent us from leaving.” He shook
his head. “No, what we need to do is wait for an Arm member to
arrive and track them when they leave.”

“
How
do we do that?” asked Fiona. Despite
Tel’s knowledge, she wasn’t sure they would be able to reach the
Arm. “Even if we can identify one, Arm members aren’t exactly
slouches when it comes to sneaking around unnoticed, they base
their entire profession on it.”

“
Uh
, I may have something that could
help us with that” said Kendrick.

Another of his idiotic
devices.
Fiona looked at him. “I thought you dumped your bag in the
locker.”

He fussed around in his pockets for a few
moments, before pulling his hand out and holding something in his
palm.

To Fiona it looked to be nothing more
than a bright red pebble.

But Tel
knew. “Is that what I think it
is?” he asked.

Kendrick
nodded
. “A
fire stone from the Elemental Islands, incredibly rare. Not much
use on its own. But I have crafted a receiver that can pick up the
energy waves it gives off. If we can slip this onto an assassin,
then once I get my bag back, we can use the energy from this to
track them.”

“
IF
we can single out an assassin and IF
we can slip it on them unnoticed; by the time we get back to the
exit they could be anywhere in the city,” said Fiona.

“
Oh, don’t worry about that,”
replied Kendrick. “My device can pick up even the faintest of
signals from several kilometers. The only other firestones in the
whole empire are in the Arketh Museum of Natural History. There
won’t be any interference within Longhaven.”

“
As for getti
ng it on an Arm member, leave
that to me,” said Tel. “I am something of an expert when it comes
to sleight of hand.”

Fion
a was starting to think it could
work, but there was one last detail. “So how do we determine who is
an Arm member? They don’t exactly wear uniforms, unless you count a
grey-cloak but there’s too many patrons wearing those. They can’t
all be assassins.”

“
There may be one way,” said
Tel. “I’ve heard that Solamh keeps a section of his shop excluded
to all customers other than the Arm. He stores his most dangerous
and precious weapons there. If we can find that, then we can find
the Arm.”

Fiona took another look at the
building. “One of us needs to get inside and examine the layout.”
She looked at the two men, not confident that either of them was up
to the task.

“
It should be you. You’re the
senior agent and I suspect you’re a far better actor
tha
n myself
or Kendrick,” said Tel. Kendrick threaded his fingers together and
didn’t say a word. He agreed with Tel, even if he was loathe to
admit it.

“
Any advice?” she
asked.

Tel rubbed one his pointed ears
as he pondered her question.
“You get any questions, pretend to be an enforcer
for the Blackbloods. They’re a new gang, but have recently made a
lot of gains so it would be plausible enough for them to send
someone for better weapons. Their leader is a dark haired elf named
Yassin qal’Aral.”

Fiona memorized
the name in case
she was questioned. She left the two men and casually made her way
over to the building. The walkways here were not as busy and she
did not have to aggressively push her way past.

She pushed open the
hefty
, green
door and entered the shop. The main room was laid out with rows of
glass cases. A few customers were walking along the rows and
browsing.

Each row had a
dif
ferent
category of weapon types; revolvers, rifles, explosives, swords,
axes and stealth weapons. Fiona had never seen such a collection in
her life. She gazed in admiration at the collection of revolvers in
the glass case as she made her way towards the other side of the
room.

There were
all manner of rare guns here,
an original Estaran Jaevus gun, a Galrian hammergun, it had the
biggest caliber bullets ever made for a handgun, but its production
had been stopped due its tendency to backfire and blow off the
user’s hand. There was a double set of silver colored revolvers
with canister attachments, for adding acid or poison to the
bullets.

At the end of the room
was a long counter,
above which were displayed various long-arm melee weapons, pikes,
pole-axes, glaives and the like. On the far right side was the main
checkout. Two customers were being served at the moment.

Behind the checkout
was a door that she
guessed led upstairs. Fiona looked to the other end of the counter.
There was another door on the far left but it was hard to
distinguish; it was the same color as the wall. She noticed that
there was a chain with a small padlock across the thin gap between
the wall and door, with only a small indent next to it that served
as a door handle.

Hidden in plain
sight
.
This Solamh is clever.

She made her way along the next row of
weapons, pretending to be intensely interested in the guns, but
keeping her eyes up and scanning the room.

A grey cloaked woman entered
the main door and walked right down the
rows, ignoring the weapons. Fiona
watched as she leaned against the counter and whistled lightly. The
clerk saw her, his eyes widened and he nodded. He mouthed an excuse
to the customer in front of him and stepped back to knock on the
door behind him.

A few moments
later
, a
tall and thin man emerged from the door and upon seeing the
grey-cloaked woman, his face burst into a generous smile. He
greeted her and bid her to follow him to the other end of the
counter. He let her past and made for the obscure door, unlocking
the padlock and chain.