Author's Nightmare: Interlude 11 (Patreon)

Elizabeth was getting used to sneaking around, it seemed to come with the territory of working for Shango Belahont.

Well, that was unfair. She’d been a thief long before they met. The only difference now was she was sneaking around with messages rather than loot. That, and she had an actually safe place to hide if the guards ever decided to break her legs. All in all, however much of a nob the bastard was, she had to admit he was a good thing for her. A good thing for lots of people, she thought. Her mind moved to Solitaire, captured again, and everything positive about her reflection evaporated. 

Today Elizabeth was just doing an information dump, simple and low-risk. People cared about a million things, but so few of them bothered with information. That was another thing separating the Belahonts, she thought. They had a mind for abstractions that most of the material-obsessed nobles standing against them simply lacked.

Viras was the natural exception, as well as a few others, but the brothers had always had a funny way of regarding things, and through her time working with them it’d rubbed off on Elizabeth. Information was about the most valuable thing she’d been asked to move around. 

Henry Grimworth was waiting just where they’d arranged him to, a nicely overlooked and nicely alienated warehouse on the edge of the city surrounded by enough poor people that the guards rarely bothered to patrol. There were drawbacks to meeting in places as dangerous as that, but they’d gotten a lot less severe since the Belahonts began building their own urban army. One of the infinite benefits of power. 

A tall man, was Grimworth. And about as happy-looking as his name would suggest. He never did seem pleased to meet Elizabeth, though that may have just been the shape of his face. As far as she could tell it had been welded into his permanent frown on a skeletal level. Might have been funny were it not aimed at her.

“You have the money?” He asked, cutting right through the pleasantries as usual. Elizabeth hid how pleased she was at that, she’d never been the most patient of girls even at the best time. Now was certainly not that. 

“I have the information of where you can find them.” She replied. “Best not to have non-combatants moving around with that sort of money.”

He grunted, either approving or disapproving but not caring enough to make it clear which. 

“Dead-drop is…” Elizabeth trailed off, sensing, suddenly, that something was wrong.

To his credit, Grimworth was almost instantaneous in picking up on it and responding. Stance lowering, weight spreading, legs coiled and ready to go taut with muscular contraction at a moment’s notice. It was like watching a bow drawn back. And Elizabeth had a feeling it would be necessary. 

“Were you followed?” Grimworth snarled, voice suddenly wrung out and sharpened like the talons of some feral thing. Elizabeth was so taken aback she became stupid for a moment, question bouncing off her mind. He repeated it, angrier. 

“No.” She snapped, thought, blinked, then swore. “Maybe.”

She’d gotten cocky. One of the few detriments of power. 

“Looks like you’ve fucked this up good and proper.” The man growled, drawing a long knife from inside his clothes and hurrying to a far wall. Elizabeth did as she saw him do, figuring that there was probably a good reason not to stand so close to the room’s centre, and plenty of even better ones to be as close to the only nearby killer on her side as she could manage. 

“You need to make a run for it.” Grimworth hissed, cursing as he glanced out through the window. “There’s guards, dozens of them. They seem to have cudgels and disabling weapons rather than edged steel so…” He cursed again, putting away his grizzly knife. “With luck they’ll fight to take us alive unless things escalate. Still, you need to run. I can fight my way out but you’ll need to jump on that distraction if you want to escape. Either of us being captured is a risk to the other.”

Elizabeth didn’t like the implication- either of the two there. That she would sell him out or, conversely, that he would her. There were particular times for arguing, however, and this certainly was not among them. 

The door shuddered, cried out. Grimworth was backing away from it so Elizabeth followed. Another impact rocked the entrance. It was a sturdy thing, easily two inches thick and seemingly made to resist a troll. Whatever was on the other side, though, was larger than a troll in totality. A third blow came, then a fourth, and more followed. Elizabeth had lost count of the rest by the time the entrance fell apart. 

Men surged in ahead of those six wielding the battering ram, and Grimworth threw himself at them. It was like watching a wolf smash into a nest of rats, a sheer physical disparity that almost tricked Elizabeth’s eyes into seeing the man as a towering giant. He smashed several of the guards off their feet, forced several more back, and had broken out of the warehouse within moments.

Elizabeth was scurrying after before she even knew what was happening. Tiny, without any disproportionate strength or resilience, saved only by her small stature making a difficult grab, the confusion of those she was slipping by and, of course, her speed.

Everyone save for herself and Grimworth seemed to be moving through molasses, and even he was sluggish to her eyes. She slipped out of the first row of guards and took off at a run, daring to look back only when she was sure no grasping arms were within reach of her. 

Amazingly, he was still fighting. Still winning, even. Either the guards had been more surprised by Grimworth’s emergence than even he had anticipated, or the man was a great deal stronger than Alora’s report had led Elizabeth to believe. Watching him barge through them was like watching an adult man-handling children. A club came from his blindspot, caught him in the temple and sent him sidelong a step. He shrugged it off, responded with a vicious punch that sent the offending man back in a spray of blood and teeth. Two grabbed his arm at once, and were dislodged with a contemptuous flex, while a third swung with a blow so slow Grimworth was able to duck beneath it and counter before it had even reached where his face was.

Movement caught the corner of her eye, guards heading for Elizabeth. She cursed her own stupidity for pausing- for even considering holding back and trying to help Grimworth- and got back to running. Elizabeth was fast. Before anything else, she was fast. Always fast, always the fastest. But today she wasn’t just running from a few men. The guards had known what they were doing in preparing this ambush. 

More were pouring in from ahead of her, half a dozen. More. They were spaced well and with their arms splayed, making a net of limbs that she had no choice but to sprint for. She twisted, weaved, slithered around them and sent the oafish thugs stumbling, falling, swearing. Then fingertips snagged her clothes and it was Elizabeth’s turn to surge away on uneven footing. 

Something smashed into her from behind, sweeping her clean off her feet, and she went down with a great deal more than just her own weight to pin her. 

“You, my dear, are under arrest for colluding with known criminal factions.”