Authors: Ilona Andrews
"It's probably because you saw me walk through the door and then pretended I wasn't here for the last couple of minutes."
Ragnvald's face split in a grin. "I just couldn't believe my eyes. Alpha of the shapeshifters popping in unannounced. I'm shocked."
Oh you sonovabitch. He was still trying to turn this into some sort of spectacle. "I'm not here in that capacity."
Ragnvald tapped his band. "This never comes off. Best to remember it now. But come on, we'll talk business." He raised his voice, shaking the nearby cups. "Someone bring drinks to our guests."
Why did everyone have to be so damn loud all the time?
Ragnvald nodded to a side table. "Please."
He took a seat and I sat across from him. Curran joined me. The vampire tried to follow but a large woman in chain mail barred his way.
A girl half my age swept by and slammed two giant tankard filled with beer on the table. Ragnvald held his up. I smashed my tankard against his. Beer splashed. We raised the tankard and pretended to take much bigger gulps than we did.
Curran drank his beer. Apparently my taking the lead meant he went mute.
The young woman sashayed over to Ascanio and Derek and led them to a neighboring table. Judging by how hard her hips were working, she was open for business.
"So, what brings you to our mead hall?"
"I'm looking for Dagfinn."
Ragnvald grimaced. "What has he done now?"
"Just got some weird runes I need him to translate for me."
Ragnvald spread his arms. "We haven't seen the man. You should talk to Helga about the runes."
I had made some calls this morning. "We did talk to Helga. Talked to Dorte and old man Rasmus, too. They can't help us. Dagfinn is our best lead for now."
A huge older man staggered into the hall. Thick through the shoulders and slabbed with what my adoptive father had called hard fat, he moved in that peculiar careful way drunks do when they have trouble putting one foot in front of the other and don't want to pitch over. His leather vest sat askew on his large frame, his face was ruddy from cold or too much booze, and his long greying hair hung down in two braids, tangling with a mess of a grey beard.
It's all fun and games until the drunk Viking Santa shows up.
"I don't know what to tell you." Ragnvald drank a tiny swallow of his beer. "He isn't here. We expelled him months ago."
"Is that so?" Curran said.
"It is," Ragnvald insisted.
The soused Saint Nick zeroed in on the vampire sitting on the floor by the table where the shapeshifters were looking at their beer. The drunk blinked his bleary eyes and shambled toward the vamp.
"I hear the Guild is having a meeting soon," Ragnvald said.
"That's what I've been told," I said.
The older Viking pointed at the vampire. "What is this shit?"
Nobody answered.
Santa upped his voice a notch. "What is this shit?"
"Settle down, dad," a younger man said from the corner.
Santa pivoted to the speaker. "Don't tell me to settle down, you stupid son of a whore."
"You don't talk about mom that way."
"I'll talk about her... I'll... what is this shit?"
"I also hear that the Pack has been called in to mediate." Ragnvald looked at me for a long moment so I'd register that it was important.
"Aha."
"We have fifteen full time members in the Guild," Ragnvald said.
I nodded. "I know. You put in what, eight years?"
"Seven and some change."
Santa rocked back, took a deep breath and spat on the vamp.
Awesome. "Are you going to do anything about that?"
Ragnvald glanced over his shoulder. "That's Johan. He's just having a bit of fun. About the mediation, Kate."
"What about it?"
The vamp unhinged his maw. "Only a fool fights with drunks and idiots," Ghastek's voice said.
"Are you calling me an idiot?" Johan squinted at the vamp.
People at the other tables stopped eating and trickled over to watch closer. They smelled a fight coming and didn't want to miss the show. This wasn't going well.
The vampire shrugged, mimicking Ghastek's gesture. "If a certain drunk spits on my vampire again, he will regret it."
Johan leaned back, a puzzled expression on his face. Apparently, Ghastek managed to stump him.
"Which way are you leaning?" Ragnvald said.
Nice try. "Where is Dagfinn, Ragnvald?"
"I've told you twice now, he isn't here."
"You've got to be kidding me. His house is here, his mother still lives here, and his stallion is out in the pasture."
"He gave him to his mother," Ragnvald said.
"He gave Magnus to his mother?"
"Yes."
"That horse is a bloody beast. Nobody can ride him except Dagfinn. The only reason Magnus hasn't bitten Dagfinn's hand off by now is because every time he tries, Dagfinn bites him back. And you're telling me Dagfinn gave him to his mother? What is she going to do with him?"
Ragnvald spread his arms. "I don't know, use him for home protection or something. I'm not a psychic. I don't know what goes through that man's head."
"You mean me?" Johan roared. "You mean I'll regret it?"
Oh no. He finally got it.
"Do you see any other fat old drunks making a spectacle of themselves?" Ascanio asked.
Johan swung over to Derek. "You! Slap a muzzle on your girlfriend."
Derek smiled. It was a slow controlled baring of teeth. I fought a shudder. The couple of guys to the left of us grabbed their chairs.
"Derek, we're guests," I called out.
Curran chuckled quietly to himself. Apparently he found me amusing.
"They need a lesson in hospitality," Ghastek said.
"I'll show you hospitality." Johan sucked in some air.
"Don't do it," Ghastek warned.
Johan hacked. The gob of spit landed on the vamp's forehead.
"Suck on that!" Johan pivoted to Derek. "You're next!"
Ascanio shot from his seat in a blur and punched Johan off his feet. Vikings swarmed. Someone screamed. A chair flew above us and crashed into the wall. Grendel bounced in place, barking his head off.
Ragnvald heaved an exasperated sigh. "Which way are you leaning, Kate? Veterans or Mark?"
"Are you going to tell me where Dagfinn is?"
"No."
Bastard. "Then I guess I don't know which way I'm leaning."
Ragnvald looked at Curran. "Seriously?"
Curran shrugged his broad shoulders. "It's her show."
A tankard hurtled through the room and crashed against Ragnvald's back. He surged to his feet roaring. "All right you fuckers, who threw that?"
The second tankard took him straight in the forehead. He staggered and lunged into the full-out brawl raging in the middle of the mead hall. Fists flew, people growled, and above it all, Ghastek's vamp crawled up the wall to the ceiling, its left paw gripping pissed off Johan by his ankle.
I sighed, jumped on the table, and kicked some viking in the face.
*** *** ***
The wind brought a whiff of hops from Ghastek's vamp loping next to me. The vikings had tried to drown it in the barrel of beer and most of the green sunblock had come off, so Ghastek ended up rolling him in some mud to keep the skin damage to a minimum. The mud had dried to a nasty crust and the vamp looked like something that would come out of Grendel's tail end.
Grendel had spent most of the fight barking and biting random people and was now smeared with someone's vomit.
Curran escaped unscathed, mostly because when people tried to assault him, he punched them once and then they didn't get up. He walked now next to my horse in his human form, a big smile on his face.
"What?" I asked him.
"Good thing you took the lead on that one," he said. "It could've gone badly and degenerated into a huge brawl."
"Screw you."
"Oh I hope you do, baby."
In your dreams.
"And that's why I don't like visiting the neo-Vikings," Ghastek said, his voice dry. "They're an uncivilized, idiotic lot and nothing good ever comes from it."
"They started it," Ascanio said.
"Of course they started it," I growled. "They're Vikings. That's what they do."
Ghastek cleared his throat. "I can't help but point out that now Dagfinn knows we're looking for him. He may go into hiding."
"Dagfinn doesn't do hiding. If he isn't involved in this mess, he'll show up on my doorstep demanding to know what's going on. If he is involved, he'll show up on my doorstep, waving his axe and trying to crush skulls. Works either way."
"So we wait?"
It made me grit my teeth. I'd hoped we'd get a hold of Dagfinn today. Roderick was running out of time, but there wasn't anything else we could do. "We go home and wait."
We parted ways with Ghastek and the four of us, Curran, Derek, Ascanio, and I, made our way back to the Keep. Jim waited for us on the stone steps as we rode into the courtyard.
"What happened to you?"
"We went to see the Vikings," I told him.
"This is nothing," Curran said. "You should've seen what happened to the vampire."
Jim smiled.
I dismounted and gave The Dude's reigns to a shapeshifter kid from the stables.
"Some people are here to see you," Jim told me.
"What people?"
"From the Guild."
Argh. "Fine. How's the boy?"
"Doolittle says he's the same. Your guests are in the conference room, second floor, third door on the left."
I marched to the second floor. Grendel decided to accompany me. Five people waited in the small reception hallway by the third conference room, guarded by a female shapeshfiter. One of them was Mark, the other four were Bob Carver, Ivera Nielsen, Ken and Juke, collectively known as the Four Horsemen. Most mercs were loners. Sometimes, when the job demanded it, they paired up the way Jim and I did, but groups of more than two were rare. The Four Horsemen were the exception to the rule. They made a cohesive, strong team, they took rough jobs and finished them efficiently and mostly above board, and they were respected by the rest of the mercs.
The two parties stopped glowering at each other long enough to contemplate my dog.
"What the hell is that?" Bob asked.
"It's my attack poodle. Did you agree to come here at the same time?"
"Hell no," Juke said, shaking her head with spiked black hair. "We were here first. He just showed up."
"I made an appointment," Mark said. "Once again, you're bringing your bully tactics to the table."
"You're an asshole," Ken told him.
"And you're a thug."
Why me?
This was the first time I heard about an appointment. I made a mental note to ask Jim about that and pulled a quarter from my pocket. "Heads." I pointed to the Four Horsemen. "Mark, you're tails."
I flipped the coin into the air and slapped it onto the back of my wrist.
"Tails." I nodded at Mark. "Let's go."
We stepped into the conference room, I shut the door, and we sat a large table of knotted wood.
"What can I do for you?"
Mark leaned forward. He wore a crisp business suit and a conservative burgundy tie. His dark brown hair was cut in that executive/politician style: not too long, not too short, conservative, neat. His nails were clean and manicured, his chin showed no stubble, and he smelled of masculine cologne. Not overpowering, but definitely detectable.
"I'd like to talk to you about the Guild arbitration," he said.
And here I thought he made the trip to chat about the weather. "I'm listening."
Mark looked at the dog. Grendel gave him an evil eye.
"I'll cut to the chase: I'd like to take over the Guild."
Ambitious, aren't we? "I kind of gathered that."
"I'm not popular. I don't wear leather and I don't carry guns." He braided the fingers of his hands into a single fist and rested it on the table. "But I make the Guild run. I make sure the customers are happy, the profits are made, and everyone gets paid on time. Without me the whole thing would collapse."
I had no doubt it would. "I'm waiting for my part in this."
"Your vote will be the deal breaker," he said. "I'd like us to come to some sort of arrangement."
He just dug a lovely hole for himself. I waited to see if he would jump into it.
"Of course, I understand that sufficient compensation is in order and our arrangement would have to equitable and mutually beneficial."
And he did. I sighed. "Mark, the problem isn't that you can't run the Guild. The problem is that you think 'white collar' is a noble title."
He blinked, obviously taken aback.
"In your world, everyone has a price," I said. "You don't know what mine is, but you think you can afford it. It doesn't work like that. You could've gone many ways with this. You could've argued that with the Guild being in limbo, nobody is getting paid. You could've pointed out that the longer this goes on, the more talent Guild will lose, as experienced mercs move onto new jobs to feed their families. Offering to bribe me was the worst argument you could've made. My opinion isn't for sale."
"I meant n offense," he said.
"But you did offend and you've demonstrated that you have no idea how to relate to me. A lot of guys are like me, Mark. Yes, you make the Guild run, but you lack the elemental understanding of what makes mercs tick, probably because you never were one. If I wanted to endorse you, which I don't, I'd have to defend my position before the Guild, which I find difficult under the circumstances."
He chewed on that for a long minute. "Fair enough. So you'll vote for the Horsemen then?"