The first fight, after the Mage Kings fell, unfolded a week after Ren and his men had acted. In the center of Pranan’s Hill, Renado and his men waited in the Targon Tavern, far from the action, but the story got to them. A guardsman from the city watch, walking along Night Kra, brushed against an ex-slave. The brush had been a shove to at least one party involved, and a fistfight had become a brawl, to all parties involved.
The city guard now patrolled their territory, staring down the slaves in Massed Alley hour-by-hour. The slaves—over two thousand had been released by dead Mage Kings—were calling themselves the Delivered now, which made Ren and his friends the deliverers. There were slaves in their group who had once been owned by King Turim, though Turim had made no reappearance. His life or death, and likewise those of Karsef, remained unknown.
The Delivered had declared their rule over Massed Alley. Not many slaves were owned by citizens living in Massed Alley, but those that were had since been freed. There was a division of a few blocks between the territories of the City Watch and the Delivered and a similar division between each such group and the third contender for Ith’s control, the growing criminal alliance of a man named Domeran. Renado spent a few days with Kazra, trying to determine the boundaries of these factions. With the tough armoured woman in tow, they were not challenged when coming and going from the guard’s terrain.
At the Targon Tavern, Woodro spent his days boasting of feats from earlier days. Ren had forbade any speech of their acts here in Ith, to the bombastic warrior’s chagrin. Asar spoke often of Karsef, worried for his comrade. Sarno passed the time with cards or knife-throwing. A few days a week the group trained, attracting the attention of the City Watch once or twice.
After a week had passed, Renado started to assign his men rotating tasks of searching. They were to report any unreported body they found. Any report of a sighting, or any contact of a King. He joined the searches too, scouting the way from the arena King Turim once frequented to the gates of his gutted estate. The slaves and guards and guard-slaves had made off with everything, and no one along the route had seen anything.
Ren sat at the bar that evening and drank a whiskey. He used to favour cider, but these days needed something stronger. For a moment, he remembered a time that his Uncle Vanci had tried telling him why he never drank soft liquor. ‘Because it makes you weak,’ he had said. Ren wasn’t sure if that was true, but he felt true.
“How long are we going to stay here?” Kazra asked. Behind her, Woodro was trying to do some tricks with coins, rolling them across his knuckles.
“As long as we need,” Ren said. “I won’t return to the Irrith’s place with a half-finished job.”
“What if he really is dead, like they say?” Kazra kept her voice low, and didn’t say ‘King Turim.’ “What if Karsef and he killed each other?”
Ren shrugged. Everyone had already proclaimed the age of the Mage Kings done. “We would have found their bodies.”
“It’s a huge city,” Kazra said. “We could look all year…”
Ren sighed. “Someone will find some—”
His next word was interrupted by Woodro. “Damn me by all the gods!” the man rattled, rising off his bar stool. Ren’s head swivelled back to where he was looking.
An enormous man, larger by a head than anyone else in the room, was hunching through the door, followed by a few others. That was Captain Urro beside the lumbering giant, miles from his ship, doubtlessly. And that meant… it was Omma leading the group, and in his arms was a tiny swab of cloth—an infant. Ren’s jaw hung slack from his face. That was Rado, he realized. His men had come from the south, and with them, Rado.
“Where’s Lerran?” Ren asked, looking around.
Omma’s face was a slab of rock, but his eyes glistened. He shook his head slowly. “He left. After Tass, he left.”
Ren flinched. “After Tass?” His fingers clenched, white and trembling around the glass of whiskey.
“She didn’t…” Omma held out the baby. “She didn’t survive the delivery.”
“Damn it all!” Ren shouted. He hurled the glass at the wall across the room, shattering it, and a few card players cursed at him. Ren slammed his fist down on the bar top, rattling a woman’s drink. A growl escaped his mouth. “That damned mage lied.”
Woodro slumped down at the bar again, and baby Rado started to wail.