Duskbound-Chapter 40Book 2,

In hindsight, Velik shouldn’t have been surprised at how easy it was to get back into the city unnoticed. He’d imagined some clandestine plot that had infiltrated all levels of society with enemies and spies lurking around every corner. The corruption, if it even existed at all, wasn’t that widespread. In the best case, Gorlath was an isolated incident and everything they were doing was pointless.

They wore their hoods up and kept their heads bowed. Giller put a small bag of coins in the hands of the gate guard, gestured to the rest of their group, and all six of them rode their horses right into the city. Nobody stopped them. Nobody even looked in their direction.

“I was really overthinking how complicated that was going to be,” he admitted to Jensen a few streets later as he dismounted from the horse. Now that they were past the gate, he had absolutely no desire to ride that thing.

Jensen tied a lead to Velik’s former mount and looped it around his saddle horn, then got moving again. The horse, well trained and with a docile personality, just plodded along, unconcerned with the status of its rider. “It was never in question that the gate guards would let us through,” he explained. “Just whether we could get in without them logging it. And since there were no officers around to oversee them, they were happy to take the bribe.”

They’d deliberately timed their entrance into the city to take place in the evening just as the sun was going down, when Sildra’s [Lunar Judgment] would have its full range of detection. She rode next to Torwin and in front of Aria, who swayed in her saddle as she focused on one of her skills. Jensen was next to her just in case he had to help keep her upright, and Velik, now on foot, brought up the rear.

Giller led them on a roundabout course that eventually got to Gold Town from the west end. She stopped in front of a mansion a few blocks down, one that had no lights in the windows and only a single man sitting at the gatehouse.

“Captain Giller,” the guard said, jolting upright when she walked up to him. “You were supposed to be out of the city.”

“I was. And now I’m back. I’ll be heading inside. Tell no one of this, but send a runner with a message for Master Blendstin to let him know I’ll be arriving at the main house shortly to update him on some complications. Use someone discreet.”

“Ma’am,” the guard said. “There aren’t any runners here, though.”

“Then you go do it,” Giller snapped.

“But… the gate, ma’am.”

“I’ll send one of the other guards out to take your post. You go. Now.”

The guard saluted, then started hustling down the street. Velik watched him go until he turned a corner, then looked back at Giller. She was already past the gate, and the rest of their team was filing in single file on their horses. “Stables are to the left,” she told them. “Here, take mine, too.”

After handing the reins over to Torwin, Giller marched up to the mansion. Curious, and with no desire to spend any more time near the animals, Velik followed her up. He could hear people inside, and he wondered what she planned to tell them.

“I don’t need your help,” Giller told him when he walked up.

“Wasn’t offering any,” he said.

“Just didn’t want to help with the horses, huh?”

Velik hid a grimace at the thought. “I don’t really like them. They’re a lot of work.”

“They certainly are. I always hated grooming them when I was in the army. There was this farrier who couldn’t get his head around the idea that not everyone loved horses like he did. He kept trying to invite me on a romantic horseback date.”

“How’d that work out for him?”

“Hmm? Oh, he got shot in the eye with an arrow and died of infection during a barbarian border raid. Shame. He was kind of cute, just a bit bumbling.”

Oh. That was not what I expected her to say.

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“I thought you were part of the Monster Hunters Guild when you were younger,” he said, trying to change the subject.

“And then the army, and then personal security. Give it another twenty or thirty years, and we’ll see how many times you change your job. Eventually, you get sick of risking your life and retire. Or you don’t and you die. Men like Torwin, thirty-year veterans of monster hunting, they’re rare. And even he doesn’t tend to take on gold-ranked missions unless he has to anymore. That’s probably why he’s still alive.”

With a comment like that, it’s almost like she’s trying to get him killed. I guess she’s not superstitious. But don’t say anything about me to anyone. I’d just as soon not die a trite, pointless death because you taunted the gods.

They entered the mansion then, and as impressive—and expensive—as it had been on the outside, stepping through the doors forcibly reminded Velik what people who had far too much money tended to do with it. An enormous marble statue, fully twelve feet tall and featuring a well-muscled, mostly naked man with a spear stabbing it down into a monster, dominated the entry hall.

Velik stopped to gawk for a second. Is that… No, it can’t be. But… the proportions are right.

Giller pulled up short when she saw what he was looking at and started cackling. “Oh, I forgot about this! Master Blendstin dragged the sculptor to one of your fights as ‘inspiration’ for this statue.”

Up until three seconds ago, Velik had given no thought to why they were using this particular property. Giller had promised that no one was living there and that it was close enough to the homes of some of the guild’s more prominent members that it would be easy to spy on them. Now, he wasn’t sure he believed that was the only reason.

“No, really. I swear, I forgot he had the statue put in the Hillguard Estate,” Giller said, but it was obvious she was trying to contain her smirk.

Velik gave the statue one last withering look, then strode past it. “Where will we be setting up and when can we get started?”

* * *

It turned out there actually wasn’t much for Velik to do. Aria was using one of her skills to look at people from a distance, and it apparently didn’t care about things like walls or roofs blocking line of sight. She was cagey about how far she could send the skill out, but it was far enough to watch him fight a hydra from the edge of a swamp. So it probably reached the guild hall and beyond from their current location.

Giller left to go sort things out with her boss once she got everyone settled, leaving Torwin to wander into the cellar, where he promptly returned with a cask of some sort of liquor and tried to talk the rest of them into sharing a drink. Jensen had a few. Sildra and Velik declined.

“You should have a drink with us,” Torwin told her half an hour later. “I can see you fidgeting. You’re nervous. This will help you relax.”

“No, thank you.”

Shrugging, the old [Ranger] tossed back the shot he’d been holding out. “I miss the days of having a low physical stat, sometimes,” he said somewhat sadly.

“Just means you need to drink more to feel the buzz,” Jensen told him. He held up another shot glass. “Here, start with this.”

Velik found himself getting agitated, but he couldn’t really say why. No one else seemed to feel that way, though. Unsure of what he was supposed to do, he walked out onto the balcony and hopped over it to land in the garden below. It was perfectly tended, every planter lined up square with the next and the flowers spaced out in exact patterns. Someone probably thought it looked amazing. Velik was stuck on how fake it all was.

It seemed like every time he turned around, he was struck again by the realization that this life wasn’t for him. He was wild, uncouth, at home in the wilderness and awkward around other people. For months now, he’d been trying to make himself into something he wasn’t, and it had been an unmitigated disaster.

When this is over, I just need to leave. I’ll find some small town where they don’t care much about manners and build myself a home nearby, so I can visit when I want, and be alone when I don’t.

Torwin found him, still pacing around the garden, half an hour later. “Something on your mind?” he asked.

“It’s nothing. Just thinking about what I’ll do next when this is over.”

“Plenty of options,” the older hunter said. “Hopefully the guild will be a lot better place than it is right now.”

“I don’t think the life’s for me, and I don’t really need their help to find monsters to hunt,” Velik told Torwin.

“Could be, yeah. At least you can say you gave it a shot. I hope you’ll try again once we get things cleaned up. If you still don’t like it then, I’ll help you however you need. That’s the most anyone could ask of you.”

“Maybe,” Velik said. He wasn’t willing to commit to another round with the Monster Hunters Guild, not after the last few months. “Did you need something, or just come out to chat?”

“Aria found a few of the mid-level guild administrators out at some event in a park a mile from here. She’s taking Sildra to check on them. I’m going along to play muscle in case things go bad.”

“You want me along, too?” Velik asked.

Torwin shrugged. “We’re not planning on attacking tonight, no matter what we find. You can relax.”

“I’ll relax when it’s over,” Velik said. “Let’s go.”

“Suit yourself,” Torwin told him. “It’s this way.”

Together, they hurried out of the mansion and followed their companions onto the street.