I turned my attention to one of the chandeliers. “I suppose wounded dignity probably doesn’t count. To the point, I killed them before they could return the favor, but not before overhearing that they had some agreement with Selyn.” Cathal’s eyebrows shot up. “Something about allowing them to take liberties with trespassers before turning over the corpses to Selyn.”

  Cathal’s expression shifted between surprise and disgust before settling on disturbed. “You’re saying Selyn is behind the attacks across the countryside?”

  When I chose to sip my tea instead, I was totally returning the favor for every moment he’d stalled earlier. “If those wood sprites are to be believed, it certainly seems that way.”

  “But why?” he finally asked, utterly confused.

  I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine at this point. What else has happened?”

  “Well,” Cathal began and then paused. “With most of the city burnt and the surrounding lands hostile, Selyn moved the seat of government to his estate in the hills to the east. Naturally, only his retainers and those of proven loyalty are allowed inside. It was already just short of a castle before, so it’s quite defensible. The settlement that sprung up across from it, less so. That’s where the useful and ostensibly loyal settled.”

  “What about the camp here in town?”

  The elf snorted, his expression darkening. “Those with questionable loyalty are sent back into Longreach. Given an opportunity to prove their worth, as it were, by helping clear the interior to assist Selyn’s lackeys in their studies of the rift. Though, some do come from the estate from time to time.”

  I frowned. “Okay, I meant to ask earlier, but what’s that supposed to mean? Clear the rift’s interior?”

  After retrieving a pastry, the elf answered, “It’s not easy to explain. When you cross the rift, it’s like stepping into a different world, one that’s subtly broken, wrong. It could be daylight here, but you step through into night or vice versa. The first groups in talked of a mine of truly boggling proportions, mining galleries so deep that a dropped stone produced no echo from the bottom. Then one day the next group in found themselves standing in a labyrinthian tomb of some sort, just endless halls filled with the dead. Thanks to Selyn’s old court mage, we now know the rift resets precisely every ten days, four hours, and one minute. When it does, anyone still inside simply vanishes. More than a few lives vanished into the ether to figure that out.”

  Stumped, I chewed on another pastry to give myself time to think. “Reset? Not shift?”

  Cathal nodded. “We’ve mapped twenty primary locations with an almost uncountable number of minor variations. Every time the rift returns to one previously mapped, it’s pristine, as if we’d never visited. The primaries rotate in sequence predictably. Once the break-in crews clear out the hostile natives—”

  “Uhm, hostile natives?”

  “The tombs are usually inhabited by undead. Most of the various caves and mines have goblinoids of various types, but that’s only true near the rift. The farther from the entrance you go, the more dangerous things become. At any rate, the break-in crews clear the immediate vicinity, and the tradesmen go in behind them. Miners, stonecutters mostly. Crews are mostly allowed to keep what they kill, minus a twenty percent tithe to Selyn unless something catches the Captain’s eye. Depending on the primary, there are quotas for certain types of stone, ore, and other materials.”

  There was so much going on at once I was starting to have issues tracking everything. “So, you’re telling me you guys are literally killing whatever moves and then harvesting everything you can get your hands on?”

  Cathal nodded. “And while the harvesting goes on, other crews are pushing deeper to identify new resources.”

  “Is Selyn looking for something in specific?”

  The elf made a non-committal grunt. “Early in the process, it was mostly quality stone and any high quality wood that could be had. That made sense considering he was reinforcing his estate and expanding that settlement. Now, though? The best rates go for various iron-heavy ores or unusual crystal formations. If I had to guess, Selyn’s court mage is trying to recreate the work of their predecessor.”

  Giving in to the sinking feeling, I rested my head in the palm of one hand. “And that work would be?”

  “The war golems.”

  I snorted. “Of course. Why not? What happened to their designer, the last court mage?”

  “He had a bit of a falling-out with Lord Selyn. One, in retrospect, was probably not dissimilar to my own, which is to say I am willing to bet he discovered something that made him sufficiently inconvenient, which justified a more permanent solution. The man was quite eccentric, so what that something could have been is anyone’s guess, but considering they lost the ability to maintain or construct golems with his death, it would’ve had to be something truly dire.”

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  “And in your case?”

  Cathal’s expression hardened with an unfriendly smile. “The guards here were originally posted to protect against human raiders before their mission became more concerned with maintaining order in the camp.”

  Another sigh. “Let me guess, particularly problematic people get disappeared in the middle of the night, never to be seen again?”

  The elf nodded grimly. “And I found out where they went.”

  More tea. “And where do they go?”

  “Into shackles, sold to human slavers, which explains why the number of raids slacked off. Why risk life and limb when a little trade can get you what you want risk-free?”

  “Well,” I muttered, “My people have a saying. Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, and three times is enemy action. I think it’s safe to presume Selyn knows about the slavers at the very least.”

  “That much I haven’t been able to prove,” Cathal noted.

  “Be that as it may, I do believe the House greatly frowns upon even the hint of such shenanigans.”

  “They do, but at the moment, it’s just the two of us and I’m supposed to be dead. While I have little doubt I could get into the estate unnoticed, executing the man is currently beyond me. The House had units who trained for this sort of thing. I was mostly reconnaissance, not the sort sent after hardened targets.”

  “But Aine and Cailleach were?”

  The man’s eyes sparkled. “Keefe’s unit had quite the menagerie of unusual agents assigned to it. They called themselves the Nighthawks, but most outside of the group referred to them simply as the Special Projects Section. If either one were here, I’d be confident. Both? I’d sleep much better. Speaking of which, it’s quite late and I’d like to be up in time to see who comes looking for my corpse.”

  The mere mention of the hour tore a yawn out of me. “You know, I guess it is pretty late. So which room back there is the bunkhouse?”

  Cathal chuckled as he started collecting dishes and clutter. “Take the couch. I set this up to look like it’s being used, as a decoy. The bathroom is that door in the corner over there.”

  A thought occurred to me right around the time the elf finished clearing things. “How many people here know who the Nighthawks were?”

  After a pause clearly spent wracking his memory, Cathal finally answered, “Aside from the two of us? Lord Selyn and his senior advisors, why?”

  “Because one of the past-times my people are famous for where I come from is regime change. It’s never too early to start, so if the Nighthawks had a unit crest, you might consider scrawling it somewhere conspicuous where your body is supposed to be.”

  The elf’s face scrunched up momentarily before eyed me with concern. “A lot of people will die if we go down that path.”

  I shrugged. “Cathal, a lot of people are going to die regardless. Lady Rowan sent me to rescue her people here because she thought slavers were going after unorganized survivors. The fact that the real slaver is Lord Selyn is only a slight complication. My goals are unchanged. The mission continues.”

  Cathal’s concern bled into a deadly serious smirk. “Spoken like a true member of the House. Aine and Cailleach chose well, but I suppose that’s expected from Keefe’s chosen. I’ll get the ball rolling. Tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, I’ll see about introducing you to some others that might help our cause. I’m curious how you intend to deal with Selyn’s lieutenants and that abominable golem of his, but that can wait until we’re rested. By the way, I don’t believe you’ve actually mentioned where you come from, Sam.”

  I grinned. “I know. The less you know, the less that can be tortured out of you.”

  Torn between irritation and amusement, the elf frowned at me. “Fair enough, I suppose.”

  Sleep was long in coming. Up on the tower with Kiki, things were sufficiently close to field conditions I never quite relaxed and slipped into a very light sleep. Here, the cool basement safehouse was too close to normal, too much home, and every time my alertness dipped too close to condition green my subconscious goosed the throttle because it understood we were still far behind enemy lines. That, and neither I nor my subconscious quite trusted Cathal just yet.

  As such, when I finally woke the next morning my head felt like Annesport’s fog sea leaked from my ears. The rest of me didn’t feel much better, all the accumulated aches, pains, and sheer strain of the last few weeks finally peeking up through all my conditioning and regimented apathy.

  After a few minutes of light stretching, I fished out Wyk’s flask and mixed some of the contents with a packet of caffeinated MRE drink mix in one of the cups Cathal had left on the coffee table. Certainly not the breakfast I wanted, but undoubtably the cherry death flavored breakfast I deserved.

  Before I finished the drink, a relatively haggard Cathal let himself in through the expected doorway and greeted me with the sort of smile you’d give the overly cheerful McDonald’s employee at o’dark’thirty on your way to work, the one with the undertone of violence restrained only by the need for sleep.

  “I see your morning is going about like mine,” I noted, cup most of the way to my lips.

  “At the very least, it’s been productive. I placed the sigil as requested. Shortly after dawn, three of Captain Darren’s lackeys were quite surprised to find it instead of my body.”

  I finished what was in the cup and refilled it with cold water while the elf dragged a chair over and sat.

  “It occurs to me,” Cathal noted while I topped off Wyk’s flask from the Jesus jug, “Yesterday’s events unacceptably cluttered my thoughts. Before we go any further, I’d like to discuss your plan to deal with Selyn.”

  “Almost dying does that,” I acknowledged with a nod. “To be fair, I don’t have a plan.”

  The elf squinted at me, but I forestalled whatever comment he was about to make with a hand. “I don’t have enough information for a plan, yet. Making them paranoid and like to chase shadows is worthwhile regardless of what we come up with, thus the Nighthawk sigil.

  “To the point, there are two ways to effect regime change. The first, direct action, is currently not an option. We don’t have enough people with the right skills to pull it off. The second, however, is still on the table.”

  Somewhat mollified, Cathal’s stare still remained less than cordial. “And that is?”

  “Undermine his legitimacy. People don’t follow leaders they don’t trust unless its at the end of the lash.”

  The elf sighed. “Which is largely already true for those here in Longreach. What are you getting at?”

  I grinned. “Two options: give them something they can believe in or take that lash away. I’m a firm believer in embracing the power of ‘and’ in situations like this. I’m sure there are people who trust you, who can be trusted to keep your survival secret. Let them know the gods are not dead, that one of Aoibheann’s chosen has come to aid them in casting off their chains. After that, we look into killing Captain Darren.”

  Cathal’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Hm. Essentially a reformulation of one of the House’s tertiary approaches in dealing with unworthy titleholders, though a less delicate one.”