TIME August 16th, mid-morning (continuing) LOCATION Jewellers Row, then the Kensington Klub, Chuza
BACKGROUND:
A twitching, spearmint-reeking robber had just thrown Lyall the jeweller’s daughter through his own shop window.
And turned on Ash with a warhammer, laughing like the whole thing was a joke only he was in on.
WHAT HAPPENED
Krusha’s warning went unheeded, and the warhammer came down hard enough to justify everything that followed.
Two solid strikes from his mace dropped the attacker with a sickening crunch before he got a second swing in.
But a third robber had already dragged Jen up onto the pavement, a crossbow jammed under her jaw, daring anyone to move.
Raven didn’t wait.
She went through the hostage-taker in a single furious pass – and through Jen doing it.
The official report would later credit the girl’s death to the dead man’s warhammer.
Nobody who filed it had actually watched it happen closely enough to say otherwise.
Inside the shop, Ash put four magic missiles into the last robber crouched behind a terrified Lyall, close enough that the jeweller felt the heat and never took a scratch.
The man threw his hands up, then bolted the second the Agents looked away – a mistake corrected with one more warning volley and a set of manacles.
Lyall found his daughter’s body a few moments later, and the sound he made didn’t stop for a long time.
It was Raven, walking off her own part in it, who noticed the second scene brewing next door.
A thin red line seeping out from under the Kensington Klub’s front doors, barely cracked open.
A Nesterook Reaver bouncer in the gang’s dark blue padded armour met her through the gap, his voice holding steady even as his hand kept scratching weakly at the doorframe behind him, blood spreading beneath the door.
“Just paint, redecorating, no trouble, Agent”
and offered, with the same forced steadiness, to go fetch his boss.
Raven wasn’t buying a word of it.
She forced the door, taking a knife across the shoulder for her trouble, and stepped into something considerably worse than a fresh coat of paint.
Two Nesterook Reaver guards lay dead just inside the foyer, along with the club’s chief concierge, Phillips – dark-skinned, slicked-back hair, a neat little moustache gone crooked in death, his crisp uniform ruined by the wound that had opened his throat.
Whoever was running this had made an example of him first, the moment he’d tried to argue.
Deeper in, past overturned card tables and a half-finished archaeology exhibit set up for the club’s monthly theme night – mock sarcophagi, crates of fossils, and a small plaque beside a cold, glowing sphere on its own dais reading
“The Bay of Chuza Bead: recently netted in the Bay of Chuza, this unique bubble captures a snapshot of time. Weighing in at more than eight grown men, and yet it floated on the waves. Always cold to the touch – if you listen very carefully, you can literally hear the world breathing”
A ring of lamplight picked out dozens of Chuza’s wealthiest patrons and staff, herded together and watched over by armed figures who were very clearly not hotel security.
One of the two display sarcophagi stood empty, a trail of something dark leading away from it into the shadows – whatever the exhibit had actually held, it hadn’t stayed put.
“I am a representative of the T’ai clan,” the voice said, unhurried, from somewhere in the dark.
“I have a proposition – if you will wait.”
Niizeg T’ai, the T’ai clan
Her price was plain enough once the Agents made themselves known.
The elf woman who’d fallen from the sky, and the sword she’d taken with her.
Noon, she said, checking the club’s own clock behind her, should be sufficient time.
To make the point, she let one hostage go:
“Run. Before I change my mind.”
and faded back into the dark with her soldiers, leaving the doors, and the deadline, behind her.
Outnumbered, outgunned, and with a room full of hostages between them and a fight they weren’t ready for, the Agents pulled back rather than force the issue – and carried the ultimatum straight back to the Section House.
Varan’s answer came before anyone had finished explaining the choice. She wasn’t going back to the T’ai clan as a gift, alive or otherwise, and if it came to that, she wanted a blade of her own rather than someone else’s mercy.
Sam, listening to the whole exchange over her patient’s objections, didn’t look any more comfortable with the alternative.
Noon was coming, one way or another, and nobody at Section 18 yet had an answer for what happened when it arrived.