PreCursive

  We each split up not long after, engaging our individual stealth Skills as we did so. This wasn’t a group mission, per se, despite our meeting up before starting.

  We were all just ag in the same area for backup purposes. We each had our own objectives tonight.

  Mine?

  Well, I had something to retrieve.

  Thorn ay not have been intended for use within urban enviros, but I’d notice that it did well enough. Acc to my panions, the effect was as if I was blending in slightly to the background, and they had to specifically foe in order to notiy form.

  Besides, I had more than just an active Skill to rely on these days. I had my Talent’s, and my own well-practiced abilities ih and infiltration.

  More than enough to fool city guards and Loyalist foot soldiers.

  I watched from the shadows as one of the designated Elderwy city guards patrolled past my hiding spot, not te away from me. I was crouched behind a tall stack of wooden crates a distanside of the administration portion of the harbor district. This was the area where most of the ledgers and ats were taken care of. It was a surprisingly rge and gaudy plex that I had heard more than one dockworker pin about. A on gripe was, why did a buniddle managers need bespoke mahogany desks and gold fittings review delivery mas?

  In particur, one Simon Smidt of Horizon Shipping from earlier in the day had a tendenoan about them. That man had surprisingly loose lips, and was more than willing to bitch to ahat would listen.

  I’d gotten quite a bit of iing info from the guy, over the st week.

  The guard not far from me was well ihe distance I could strike from, but I stayed my hand. This wasn’t because I had any particur qualms anymore about eliminating enemy batants, no. It was because the standing orders for Noe Agents operating inside Elderwyck were to stay your hand with the guards.

  There had been a big meeting about it and everything.

  Hook had told us the goal wasn’t to pletely destabilize the city itself. Our mission was to cripple and bring down the Loyalist infrastructure from the ihrough acts of sabotage and even assassination. There was to be a clear deliion for our purposes between acceptable targets for discrete disposal. The city guards of Elderwyck were, by and rge, recruited from the citizenry of the actual city. While they may have been pced uhe and of the local Loyalist ander, we were deliberately not targeting them.

  We didn’t want to tury itself against us by killing their sons and daughters.

  But the Loyalist soldiers themselves…

  Well.

  Hook had ht told us to take any ce we could, as long as it didn’t promise or pce us in danger.

  And by and rge, my fellow Agents were following that order.

  This hadn’t gone unnoticed, by either fa.

  It was quite clear to see the differeioween them. While most of the city guards I had seehe st few days were wary, they weren’t particurly ed about being dragged into a dark alley and murdered. They simply went about their business with wary, watchful eyes.

  It’s funny, I had heard from anent that this had an unintended, if wele side effect. In the rare cases that a lone guard came upon a on a mission, they were deliberately turning away and ag as if they hadn’t seen us. The guard force had noticed hoeren’t targeting them and were responding accly. I got the feeling there wasn’t any love lost betweewo fas from the almost tacit acceptance of our tactics.

  However, the Loyalist soldiers were a different story.

  Every single one of them ordered to supplement the guard force was dht paranoid. Their eyes darted about trying to plumb the depths of every shadow in the night, while sweat was visible on their foreheads, even in the freezing temperatures. They kept a tight grip on their ons at all times, their bodies held in coiled positions ready to strike at any moment.

  In fact, here came ht now. A lone Loyalist soldier was trailing not far behind the city guard that had passed my position, eyes darting about furtively and jumping at every shadow. Stupidly, he had strayed from the path and had started rooting around in an alleyway across from my position, as if he would find a saboteur among the garbage.

  I eyed him coldly for a moment, pting.

  In a split-sed decision, I decided to go for it.

  I raised one hand, poi him, and cast a skill that had seen a det bit of use i week.

  Shadow Thorn.

  Unseen, unheard, the shadows in the alleyway across from me thied behind the guard. From their inky bck depths, a deadly spiked thorn rose upon a crimson red vine, swaying in a serpentine manner. Before the guard could eve, the thorn speared forward.

  And tore through his throat from behind, severing his spine as it did so. His poorly made armor wasn’t able to stop the Skill from delivering the strike at all.

  The only he Loyalist soldier was able to make a brief gurgle before he fell forever silent.

  I celed the skill, thorn rapidly retreating from the throat of the soldier and bato the pool of shadow before dissipating. The Loyalist corpse fell backward with a g upon the cobblestones of the dockyard, the tling up and out of the alleyway.

  Ah.

  I hadn’t intended for that noise.

  It appeared to have alerted the city guard who had passed me not long ago. He turned around at the sound with curious eyes. I think he was expeg the guard he had to have known following him to greet his gaze. Maybe he thought the incautious soldier had fallen over or something.

  Instead, the only thing that met his eyes was ay street, wind whistliween its walls.

  The guard visibly tensed for a moment, before I saw him deliberately turn around and keep walking. I noticed that his shoulders were held stiffer than they had been, however.

  Oh, he knew what had just happened.

  I’d bet on it.

  I shook it off and aimed another hand at a nearby rooftop, casting Thrapple as I did so. As I flew through the air to nd on the shingles of the roof, I spared a thought for possibly disposing of the corpse of the soldier I’d taken out.

  I decided against it.

  They’d find him in the m, I’m sure. The snow would preserve his corpse.

  ………………………………..

  This was the pce, I was sure of it.

  Below me were the offices of Horizon shipping, the mert pany I had been ordered to go and rob. Acc to Hook, Duke Olsen had a major trolling stake in this particur outfit. While they were far, far from being his only source of ine from which he was helping bankroll the Loyalist cause, they were a major tributor. Horizon was one of the inal three pahat Olsen had fouo cw his from the very bottom.

  Which had been a bit of a shoe.

  Duke Quentin Olsen hadn’t been born a noble. Olsen was even his inal name. No, instead, he had amassed such a ridiculous fortuhat he had bought himself a le. Then, he had wooed the daughter of the previous Duke Olsen, married her, taken her name, and began ruling Elderwyck. You would think his lowly ins engendered a bit of sympathy for the plight of the an in him.

  You’d be dead wrong.

  But I didn’t have time for such thoughts.

  I o get ihis gaudy office. It was detly well guarded, from what I could see. I’d ted six guards so far, all of them from among the city forces. That meant I had to go in quiet, instead of taking them out one by one.

  Normally I’d say this was a bit tricky, but, well…

  The guards were sg. The ued snowfall had seen most of them retreating to a small guardhouse to huddle around a firepce. They had left only a pair of shivering, miserable guards to watch the front and batrances of the office.

  That just wasn’t enough.

  However, I had no pns to gh either of those poor shivering saps. You see, I’d noticed something during my work as a Noe Agent.

  People didn’t tend to thiically. This led to them periodically fetting to properly secure any potential entranot on the ground floor. Not that this building had a proper door up here on the roof or something.

  But it did have plenty of windows. And whaddya know, the lock was weak on one of them. I barely had to jimmy it a few times before the fragile pieetal bent under my urging. O en, I gripped the lip of the roof and swung myself inside silently, nding on plush carpet. Slowly easing the window closed, I allowed myself a brief smirk.

  Well, that had been easy.

  Infiltration plete.

  Looking around, I saw that I was in some kind of medieval looking cubicle farm. There were partitioned scribe desks all around me, all of them thankfully bereft of their ood. I’d hoped I wouldn’t run into any te-night workers. I didn’t have to worry about running into anyone else in here. None of the guards were even inside. I think they were forbidden from entering the premises after hours.

  But I wasn’t where I o be. I might be on the right floor, but I wasn’t going to find any important dots in the desk of a scribe. No, it would be in the offiore important Horizon employees. This floor did have its own closed-door rooms used by the higher-ups. Some were meeting rooms, as I found out peering through windows.

  But the majority seemed to be personalized.

  However, I wasn’t looking for the office of some overpaid, likely corrupt middle manager.

  I o find the personal office of Karl Eisenhorn, the owner of Horizon Shipping. By far the most corrupt of them all.

  Eisenhorn was a boyhood friend of the Duke, from before he had bought his le. To reward Karl’s loyalty as a leg breaker all those years, Quentin Olsen had elevated the man to the owner of one of his inal shipping panies. However, there roblem.

  The man was a plete buffoon. He spread and funted his newfouh all over the pce, g little for either personal Statusial adva or anything beyond his newfound hedonism. It made him careless.

  Careless to the degree that he should be keeping incriminating dots in his own office, acc to our intelligence.

  Surprisingly, I didn’t find his offi this floor, even though I'd thought it was the top one. What I did find iral staircase that seemed to lead upward to a detached floor above.

  I frowned, annoyed with myself. Looks like I hadn’t scouted the pce well enough that I couldn’t tell there was another level. I’d wasted precious time inside on a fruitless search when I didn’t have to.

  I promised myself I’d do better, ime.

  I climbed the stairs, to find an even more vish waiting area in front of a gaudy set of double doors. Rich, plush red carpet filled the entire small floor from wall to wall. A small desk that looked like it could belong to a receptionist thankfully sat empty. I didn’t bother cheg it, instead advang on the double doors. Trying the handle, I found them locked. This one I couldn’t easily brute force, like I had the window.

  Oh well, time to call the whole thing off.

  Not.

  I took out my lockpig toolkit and kneeled down in front of the detting to work.

  You know, for such a wealthy man, it looked like Eisenhorn had skimped on his locks. I had it open in moments.

  Getting to my feet, I carefully opehe doors. Oher side I found an office that was so fshy, so garish, and so uselessly ostentatious that I was momentarily reminded of Magnus’s mansion ba Addersfield. I shook it off, though, stalking inside and looking around.

  Best pce to start robably the desk, I decided.

  Approag the unnecessarily rge, nearly room-spanning desk, I started rifling through its draws. Unsurprisingly sidering Eisenhorn’s reputation, I only found…

  Bottles of booze, and what looked like packets of illicit drugs.

  I helped myself to one of the bottles of high-quality booze, slipping it into my pouch.

  Better me than you, fuckface.

  Still, that left me with having to search the rest of the office. I didn’t want to return to the temporary Noe base ihe walls of Elderwyck with nothing to show for my mission. I just know Hook would give me one of those looks of his.

  Wisp would probably make fun of me too. I'd spoken to the ent a few times over the past week, when our paths crossed.

  We'd almost struck up an impromptu friendship.

  Standing in the middle of the office, I slowly turned in pce, examining it as I did so. I paused when my eyes set on a rge portrait of what must be Karl Eisenhorn, a heavy set, square jawed brute of a man. Once upon a time, he would have probably passed as formidable-looking. Now he just looked like an old boxer long goo seed, to me, all dressed up in frippery that didn’t suit him at all.

  At the very least, the painting was well done.

  But…

  It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Maybe it was. I had to remind myself that what seemed cliché to me robably thought of as clever by the people of Vereden. They didn’t have the easy access to media and stories like I had, growing up ba Earth.

  Oh, what the hell.

  I approached the rge portrait hung on the wall and lifted a er, looking behind it.

  I resisted the urge to cackle at what I found.

  Sure enough, there was what looked to be a safe set into the wall behind the portrait. I bet this was where old Eisenhorn was keeping his dirt on his long-time friend, the gigantic dumbass.

  I removed the portrait from the wall a on the ground, fully exposing the safe.

  I eyed it for a moment in thought.

  Safes were a different matter from simple locks. I wasn’t actually fident in my ability to craething like this. My lessons as a had yet to reach that point.

  Good thing Hook had told me it was fine if I was a little overt.

  I raised my hand and poi the safe, triggering Poisonthorn Shot. The sizzlingly poisonous crimson thorn shot from my palm and lodged itself in the surface of the safe, corroding the log meism shortly. When I tried to open it after letting it work, the entire door fell off altogether.

  I mao catch it at the st moment before it hit the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief at the close call. I don’t know if that noise would have brought the guards, but better safe than sorry.

  Setting it dowly, I took a look in the safe and smirked at what I found. Inside were stacks and stacks of part, scrolls, and even what looked to be gems and gold.

  Jackpot.

  In more ways than one.

  The Division could always use some extra funding in hostile territory, after all.

  Taking out a sack I had brought along for just this purpose, I scooped everything inside.

  Time to get out of here.

  Turning to leave, I paused when my eyes fell on the portrait still leaning against the wall.

  I wonder how much Eisenhorn would panic when he found that his stash had been looted.

  Sucks to be you, asshole.

  I turned a his office, quickly retrag my steps to the window I had entered from. Climbing ba the roof, I found that the guards had hardly moved from their positions while I was inside. Not even the couple shivering in the snow at the entrances had heard anything.

  With one final go check that the coast was clear, I left the office behind and started making my way back to the Noe safehouse.

  I’m sure Hook and the analysts back at HQ would find all this stuff very iing.

  Mission aplished.