It took a great deal of work to minimize the attention drawn to the jewelry store. Some time had to be spent jawing with the other nearby merchants, rueful statements about what a shame it was even this street – this very block – could experience such a terrible crime . “You must have just gotten a shipment of gems,” Esther Haley commented as she measured the sleeves on a fine silk shirt, to make sure the cuffs fell at just the right point on his wrists. “Loose lips somewhere in your delivery chain, I’m sure,” she added.

Laibrook just nodded and sighed, agreeing that the thieves – bold ruffians, to attack in the middle of the day – must have been after that (non-existent) box of rubies. And what luck he had friends in Tarrish who had caught on to the plot – the Nightsong Guild’s ears were sharp, he told Mistress Haley, and their protection swift. A wise move, to have hired their services, services he would recommend to any of his fellow merchants. Why, they had saved Therese, and his guard, and all his inventory.

That was the story he let drop, the lies mixing easily with truth, and he left it to the garment-maker to repeat it to the tobacconist, the tobacconist to tell the cobbler, the cobbler to tell the silversmith. By late afternoon, the tale was well-established – and by then, he had turned to pressing gold into the right palms among the City Guard, asking quietly that the investigation be deflected, doubts not pursued too closely. He might have attempted charms to reinforce the request, but for fear that the touch of magic might be detected – the Guard might turn its gaze away from well-placed bribes, but magical coercion on any Guard member would only draw closer scrutiny. And now was not a time for him to risk such scrutiny, when time was short.

Some of the gold pressed into the palm of a guard at the jail infirmary, where the muscled fighter, Dorath Kir, had been taken for his injuries. The wounds were dire, yet nothing that one of the clerics under contract to the League could not have healed – if the Guard had not decided to let him lie in pain at least one night, though, for the insult of breaching the League peace. Indeed, Laibrook himself, still with some of the bard’s skills he had learned in his youth, could sit by the man’s bed and lay one hand on the man’s arm, and hummed a song to knit flesh.

“Or,” Laibrook whispered, lips close to the man’s ear, “I could arrange to have a knife slipped into your back at some point, before you ever come to trial.” He sat back in his chair to look at the man, lying bound to the bed, letting him consider his options. “That might be the appropriate payment for what you and yours have done to me.” To Therese, who likely would never set foot in the shop again, to Daned Thand and Maeva, who now would have to find another refuge. And to Laibrook himself, whose name – regardless of how much gold he might spread about, or what lies he might plant – would inevitably reach back to Sa’iph, to Antazos.

“Or?” Dorath Kir finally prompted, voice rasping in his throat.

It was enough to confirm what he had hoped: A deal could always be made, especially with a Vind.

The blonde female Shal was more problematic. Getting in to see her was no trouble – he simply had to wait for the shift change, for the night-guard to take charge of the precinct jail where she was housed. More gold (not enough, he would find out later from Athron Dolmen, to keep the man’s mouth shut) was all that was needed.

Handling her, though, was a different matter … The fighter was the straight-forward type, blunt, plain-spoken – and as such, not terribly skilled at seeing through a bluff. This one, though, with her green eyes, looked like the sort who had survived through deceit, and even if she could not know where truth ended and lie began, she could suspect. Further, she had already figured out she was unlikely to face the noose for her limited part in the events at the Hamal chapterhouse. If she was not going to hang, she might be able to negotiate her own way out of imprisonment.

All of that meant Laibrook had less leverage than he had over Kir, and made the deal riskier – in the end, perhaps riskier than the possible reward, given how little she knew about the reasons why she had come to Halveet. “I didn’t need to know,” Varimer told him with a shrug. “Dorath was the one hired by the woman, Erqua. She wanted us to find someone, a girl. I don’t care who she worked for, or why she wanted us to hunt. As long as I was paid.” She leaned back against the wall, stretching her legs out and crossing them at the ankle. It did not even matter to her, he could tell, that three of her compatriots were dead, and the other lay gravely injured.

“That’s really what’s important, isn’t it?” Laibrook answered, matching her nonchalance. “What’s in it for me?” He waited a moment, letting her realize that it was not just a rhetorical question. It was an invitation, a solicitation.

Risk. If Daned Thand had known, he would have told Laibrook he was mad to take it. But Thand was in hiding with Maeva, and set to leave Halveet for parts unknown as soon as Athron Dolmen and the others had departed. Mad – Laibrook had little choice but to be mad, with his name destined to make its way back to Sa’iph, to Antazos. He needed to make sure that when it did, the tale around it was one he crafted himself, for his own purposes.

Laibrook was not foolish enough to think he could bluff the Shal lord directly. He needed a stalking horse – or two – to carry the lies for him.

DM’s Note: Illustration is a detail, used under Creative Commons license, from this photograph