This is a long one. I wanted to split it up somehow, but I couldn't find a good way to do it thematically. The next chapter will be much shorter.

As I rode towards the low town in the cab, I observed the city from the window. As I approached the Gunthersplatz, the scars of the revolt became more and more pronounced. First, it was just a little extra debris in the street. Then I started seeing scorch marks on and divots excavated from walls, broken windows, doors hanging open in the breeze. Miserable people lingered outside those, some huddled, some moving things into or out of homes and tenements. Then buildings were missing chunks. The people outside those buildings usually had all their possessions piled in a sad little heap, getting ready to move to the refugee camp outside the wall. Then they were piles of masonry and wood. No one was outside those, except the ones that were sleeping on the streets. Then they were cinders, and there were corpses on the ground.

Moments after I saw the first corpse, the carriage stopped, and let me out onto the Gunthersplatz. It was like a scene out of hell, which it nearly had become. The cobblestones were scorched, and had even melted in places, taking on an angry red or blue color in some cases. It looked as though they were still hot, but of course they weren't.

Behind me were the ruins of the modest Temple of Sigmar, Guard of the Reik, which had probably been a temple to Manaan not so long ago. It had obviously been the rioters' first architectural victim, but it hadn't been burned, or not mainly. It had literally been pulled down and its remains defaced with sigils of Tzeentch. Witch hunters were overseeing consecrated demolition crews, who were covering it in pitch to be burned properly. The temple's wall fronting on the platz had been destroyed, of course, but the walls on either side hadn't been, and against them, stacked like cordwood, were bodies.

I looked out across the platz to the various streets that fed into it, of which there were six. The cultists had obviously come from the poorest quarters of the city, the southwest. But it was difficult to tell where exactly, because virtually everything to the southwest of the platz was utterly destroyed. I picked a street at random, and began walking down it, wincing slightly.

The street in question was the Feldgasse. The road was strewn with rubble, debris, burnt wood and bodies. I spoke to a few of the locals, those few that remained, and they always told me that the riot had started further west and south. I kept walking. Three hours later, I hadn't made much progress. I needed a better way of doing this.

I decided to wade into the ruins of buildings off the road. I got covered with ash and ended up smelling powerfully of smoke, but I found something on the threshold of what had been a seamstress's shop. In fact, I had sat down on the concrete step, despondent at my lack of success. It was then, while rubbing my fingers on the ash-covered surface, that I spotted a small blue dot. It looked almost like a drip of pain. I drew Arielle, and placed her runes next to the dot. Sure enough, the runes lit up, if barely perceptibly.

I tried to leap to my feet, by a catch in my rib turned into more of an upward stumbling. I walked into the destroyed shop, and looked around for a few minutes. Again, I found nothing. I gritted my teeth and grunted frustratedly. "Damn it!" I hissed.

I knew what it meant. There were more of those dots out there, I knew. I had to find them, and that would be no easy task, especially in my condition. I spotted a group of snipes playing in the gutter just a few meters down. I called over to them, "You lads! How would you like to earn a mark?"

Three of them scampered over warily, their filthy, tattered clothes and traumatized eyes briefly made me want to just give them a mark. The charitable impulse caught me by surprise. I was not accustomed to such generous thoughts. If I had met these kids at almost any almost other point in my life, the first thing I would have done would be to cuff them around the ears to make sure they knew I wasn't to be fucked with. I pushed all that to the side to address them, "You lads see this dot here?" I said, indicating the mark

"Aye, guv," the apparent leader said, who I was surprised to note, on closer inspection, was a girl. She looked to be about nine or ten, but I suspected that she was older, and malnourished.

"I'm pretty sure there are more of them about. I need you to find them for me. I especially want to know if you see anything that makes you think there's a pattern that leads somewhere. Can you do that?"

"Wass this 'bout a mark, eh?" the girl said.

"Yes, absolutely. You're the leader, I can tell, so I'll give you this mark up front," I said, reaching into a pouch on my belt to produce a silver coin bearing the image of a gryphon. I addressed the other two, saying, "She's the one who got you this business, so that mark is hers and hers alone. You understand?" They sullenly nodded their heads, while the girl's eyes lit up. "Good. Make sure they all know. If you try to take it from her, I'll know, and I'll burn you at the stake. You know I can. I'm a witch hunter." I was pleased to see the fear in their eyes, and they nodded their heads enthusiastically now.

"Good. So, for the rest of you. Everyone who assists in this job will be paid 5 pfennigs. And I will rely on the word of this girl to tell me who actually worked. Got it?" All three nodded their heads now. "Okay. And don't tell anybody what you're about. Don't want to get robbed or murdered, do we?" They shook their heads. "And don't tell anyone about me. Don't want me getting robbed or murdered before I can pay you, right?" They shook their heads emphatically. "Exactly. Get to work. I'll be here."

About two hours later, it was dark and I was getting ready to pack it in for the night. Just then, the leader girl appeared seemingly out of nowhere and said, "Got summat for ya, guv'."

I was about to reply, when I looked down the street and saw about ten witch hunters marching in my direction, led by von Kalbach. Just behind him, looking worried, was Yolk. "Shit," I swore under my breath. It wasn't that I wasn't expecting it. In fact, I had expected my little stunt to blow back on me earlier today. But this was damned poor timing.

Here, Duquesne neglected to add that he hoped his little diversion would continue to divert the attention of certain people long after he and von Kalbach had their reckoning on it.

I swept the hat off my head, and crammed it under my arm. I jumped to my feet and manhandled a nearby stall owner. I pressed a mark into his hand and stripped him of his long, nondescript woolen cloak, which I threw over my shoulders and pulled up the hood. The man was still spluttering and protesting when the girl and I disappeared into the ruined buildings.

"Don't feel like talkin' ta those other pointies, eh guv'?" she asked, when we were definitely out of sight.

I favored her with a small smile, saying, "Smart girl. No, I don't. What's your name, girl?"

"Nina," she said, as she led me deeper into the destroyed quarter.

"I know another Nina, about your age. She's a very sweet girl, so I'll choose to believe you are, too."

"I ain't, guv."

"Ah-ah! I said I would choose to believe it," I said, grinning at her. She grinned back. "So, what'd you find?"

"Found that patt'n like ya wanted, guv'. We didn't follow it. Figured if pointies was int'rested, might not be safe for us snipes."

"Even smarter. Lead on." She did so, for about five more minutes.

When the girl stopped, she pointed to a cobblestone, saying, "'Ere's where the patt'n starts, guv'. Leads off that direction, down ta the gatehouse."

I knelt and identified the dot, and followed it for about a block. Indeed, there was a dot every twenty to thirty meters. I stood up, satisfied, and said, "Good work, girl. Unfortunately, I don't have time to pay you all in person, so," I pulled a pouch full of pfennigs off my belt, "take this. Should be about five marks worth of pfennigs in there. Enough to cover all the fees I owe?"

"Aye, guv'," she said, beaming at me and the pouch.

As I walked away, I said, without turning my head, "I'd advise you not to pocket it all. Don't want to go getting killed or worse by our fellow snipes, yeah?" I didn't know whether she heard me, but what I did know, even without turning around, was that she was already gone.

A few minutes later, I was standing outside a ruined building, just inside the outermost wall of the city and about two stone's throws from the West Gate. I could tell that, even before the riot, it had been a shithole, but the blue dots pointed directly here. I crossed the threshold, and looked around momentarily in the destruction, but I knew it would yield nothing. I found what I was looking for just a moment later: a trapdoor leading to a basement.

I cleared the door of debris, and yanked on it. It didn't budge, and I realized that its hinges had been destroyed in the fire. I left the building, and pried up a loose cobblestone from the street. I took it inside, knelt by the hinges, and smashed them off with a few quick strikes from the rock, which my partially healed body did not appreciate, and it let me know this by the shooting pains in my arms and knees. I grunted, stood back up, and hauled the trapdoor out of the way. The inside of the trapdoor was very dark, but I could see that there was a ladder inside leading down. I mounted it, and began climbing. The ladder creaked ominously as I did so, and just before I was about to hit the bottom, it collapsed, and I fell about five feet in the dark, landing heavily on my feet, absorbing the impact with my knees, for which I was rewarded with another collection of shooting pains.

As I dusted myself off, I looked up at the ladder. Most of the bottom rungs were destroyed, and I realized they had been weakened in the fire. The first unbroken rung was above my head, and I knew there was no way I was getting out that way. Even if the rung could have supported my entire weight, my injured condition prevented it. "Fuck," I swore. "Hope there's another way out of here."

It was pitch dark, and there were no torches or other lights nearby, so I reached into my overcoat and fished around in one of its many pockets until I withdrew a set of spectacles with green glass lenses. They were an item I had picked up in a curio shop in Tobaro about ten years ago. The shopkeeper thought they were just another knickknack, but they had saved my life several times. I put on the glasses, and the room was suddenly bathed in a rather dim green light. It wasn't as good as full lighting, but it was better than a torch, and I had practice using them.

The basement wasn't large, and it looked nondescript. It was extremely cluttered, with piles of miscellanea everywhere. I saw tarps, fishing equipment, rope, lumber, bricks, bags of grain, bolts of cloth, and even a rather sad-looking rocking horse with still more stuff stacked on top. Nothing was, as far as I could tell, remotely out of place in a typical basement of a house near a river, except for a few piles of books. I looked through those first. I found a few illegal books, but they were just smut, not chaotic. As I advanced deeper into the room, I felt a slight vibration at my hip. I drew Arielle, and her runes shone dully. There was definitely something down here. In one corner, underneath several large tarps, was a pile of weapons, not in very good repair. I wondered why the cultists hadn't used them in the uprising, and filed it away for later. I turned away, and decided to make a circuit around the room. As I did so, I noticed that the Banisher got brighter around the middle of what I thought might be the eastern wall.

I inspected the wall, but didn't see anything obviously different about it than the other walls. I began tapping the wall with Arielle's handle, and eventually heard a dull hollow sound. I then pressed my fingers hard along the wall where the Banisher was brightest, and dragged them along its length. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the seam of a door like I expected, but I knew it was there. I set to looking for the button that would open the door. I checked for all the things that typically contain such buttons, candelabras, shelves, the undersides of desks and tables, but unfortunately found none of any in the basement. And then I remembered the rocking horse, which I realized was an odd item upon which to stack other items. I walked over to it, and I realized it did not rock. At first, I thought the reason was because the rockers were blocked, and indeed they were by pieces of wood. I kicked those out of the way, and it still did not rock. I pushed the miscellaneous items off of it, and I realized I couldn't tip it over, either. I knelt and examined the rockers. It was cleverly hidden, but I could see that it was not only connected to the floor, but that some kind of mechanism passed between the floor and the horse. I examined the horse's body, and found a button underneath the horse's wooden tail. I tried pressing it, but it barely budged. I put both thumbs on it and pressed hard, and was rewarded with a satisfying click! as the button depressed. I then heard some whirring and scraping of gears, and the section of wall I identified earlier retracted slightly, and slid sideways, opening a new passage.

I stood slowly, and drew Arielle. I held her pointing outwards, but close to my body as I stepped through the door, checking either side to make sure no one was waiting in ambush. When I stepped through, the door closed automatically. I almost panicked for a moment, before discovering the button to re-open the door was not hidden on this side, and looked to be better maintained. Still, it would be tricky to get out quickly, especially if I was under fire.

I advanced deeper into the corridor, and found no side rooms of any kind until the corridor came to an end. Through the door there, it opened into what could only be called a large staging room. It was dimly lit, and one corner was filled with benches and tables, one corner with what looked like the remains of military supplies, one corner was filled with religious paraphernalia, and the corner I found myself in had a number of desks. And everything, of course, was daubed with sigils of Tzeentch. There was a stench of blood in the room, and there was dried blood on the floor, probably from some sacrifices on the day of the uprising. Indeed, I spotted a number of corpses stacked by one of the doors leading out of the room, who looked to be young females and to have suffered grievously before their throats were cut. There were devotional icons all over the space, covered in bloody feathers and constructed of human bones in the shape of birds of prey, all beaks and eye sockets.

There were no cultists currently in the room, but I could hear some muffled shuffling and banging coming from rooms beyond. I knew I didn't have much time. I decided to rifle through the desks for any documents. A moment's search revealed nothing. Apparently, the cultists had already finished the cleanup in here, such as it was.

Unfortunately, it was then that my time ended. I had no time to duck behind one of the desks as three cultists came through the far door, talking. They immediately noticed me and began shouting. One tried to run back through the door, but I raised Arielle and shot him in the head. The other two rushed me. I killed the one on the right with Arielle's second shot, and ran towards the other one, the rush of violence bringing a smile to my face. I holstered Arielle and drew my gladius. The cultist had a mace, and swung it clumsily at me. I caught it on the flat of the gladius' blade, and swung the pommel up to his face, smashing him in the jaw. With my left hand, I punched him hard in the ribs. I grabbed him by the throat, and punched him again with the gladius hilt in my right fist, and he fell unconscious immediately, dropping to the floor in a heap. I grabbed some rope from the remains of the military supplies, and tied his feet and hands tightly. I re-sheathed the gladius, re-loaded Arielle, and threw the cultist over my shoulder.

I was just turning around, when all five of the doors opening on to the staging room opened. Cultists spilled in, at least eight of them. Most carried some kind of blunt weapon, but a few carried a torch or a single shot pistol. I dropped my prisoner unceremoniously, and suddenly the Striker blazed. Almost involuntarily, I snatched the drape of my warded brigandine overcoat, and transposed it between myself and the barrel of a pistol. The bullet slammed into the leather, splitting it open, and splattered on the consecrated steel beneath. Again the Striker blazed, and I turned my back to kneel on the ground, and felt two more bullets strike my back, denting the plates and sending great waves of pain through my torso, and I thought I heard a rib break.

I ignored the pain with an animalistic grunt, then stood and spun back around, just in time to kill the first two cultists with Arielle. I passed her to my left hand, and re-drew my gladius. As one, three cultists swung their weapons at me. I pivoted away from two of them, and caught one stroke painfully on my left forearm, though I didn't feel any bones break. I slashed at the two I had pivoted from, but didn't draw blood. The other, I pistol-whipped with Arielle, crushing his face and sending him to the floor in a screaming, bloody heap. I quickly repositioned myself on the other side of the man, executing him with a quick, downward thrust to his throat, eliciting a gout of blood that splashed my right arm. Behind me, my captive had begun to stir, and I kicked him back toward the corner as I retreated, trying not to let them surround me. The cultists formed a wary semicircle around me. I kicked my prisoner one more time, turning slightly to face him, and, seizing what they thought was an opportunity, two of the cultists lunged. I turned the kick into a pirouette, hitting the two attackers in the face with the hem of my brigandine coat. Momentarily stunned, I thrust my gladius into the leftmost attacker's groin, and then threw myself bodily with the other, knocking him to the ground. I repositioned myself on the other side of him, a few stomps from my boot putting an end to him as I re-assessed the situation.

The groin-stabbed traitor almost immediately expired, and only four cultists remained. I briefly saw fear in their eyes before all four rushed me, three of them holding torches. I picked the one second from the right, and threw Arielle into his face, hard. The gun's heavy barrel cracked his forehead, and he recoiled, his torch flying out of his hands. I spun over to engage the rightmost cultist, now with little support. He parried my first stroke, but that had been a feint. I brought my left hand up while he was distracted with my gladius, and I poked him hard in the eye with my thumb, and then punched the eye socket. He screamed and recoiled, clutching his face and dropping his weapon. I put my gladius through his throat. The remaining two cultists rushed back at me, simultaneously striking at me with their great clubs. I tried to spin away, but a spike of pain tore through my left leg in mid-pivot, and I stumbled over the corpse I had just made. The cultists thus missed their swings, but I was now on the floor. I rolled, frantically, narrowly evading two more strokes. As I rolled onto my back, some distance away from the two, my hand flashed into my coat, and I withdrew a throwing knife, which I projected wildly in the cultists' direction. I heard a shout of pain, and got to my knee. But I had only grazed one of the cultists, and the other was standing over my kneeling form, swinging his club in a powerful downward arc. I caught the blow on the flat of my gladius, which I hadn't adequately braced with my left hand. The result was a weak deflection and a nasty gash in my left hand. The club kept going after impacting the blade, smashing into my left shoulder. I was driven to the ground, screaming in pain. The screaming was partly a feint, and it gave me an instant's breather as the cultists thought I was mortally wounded. It was enough of a window that, as I fell to the ground, I was able to lash out with the gladius in my uninjured right hand, and badly lacerating the cultist's thigh and leg. He fell to the ground in a heap next to me. I crawled over to him and drove the gladius into his gut, after which he stirred no more.

I rolled, still on the ground, and the cultist I had grazed was moving again, charging at me, in fact. I fumbled for an instant in my coat, and then withdrew my other throwing knife, and put it into his throat. His momentum carried him and his weapon forward another meter, and the club fell with a whump! next to my ear. I almost relaxed when I heard the shuffling footsteps of the cultist I had thrown Arielle at behind me. I looked around, and Arielle was just an arm's length from where I was sprawled. I grabbed her, and broke open the breech, ejecting the spent brass. I shoved a single cartridge into one of her barrels, and snapped the breech closed. At the last second, I brought her up and fired into the moving cultist's thigh. His leg disintegrated between the knee and hip in mid-stride, and he toppled rather comically to the floor. He didn't even scream, and when I walked over to finish him, he still looked more surprised than fearful or pained. I looked down at him with something that might have been pity, before I smashed my gladius through his face, spraying blood all over my jerkin, overcoat, and face. Then I collapsed in a heap, the sword still protruding from the man's brain.

On the ground, I let out a massive, relieved, feral guffaw, "HahahaHA! Oh, yes. I have missed this," I said to no one, laughing uncontrollably and utterly heedless of the possibility that there might be more cultists. There was nothing in the world quite as sweet as betting your life against long odds and winning with only the skill of your mind and the strength of your body. Fighting in a unit just wasn't the same. A moment later, I had cause to regret my rest and reverie, for I smelled smoke. I looked around, and saw, to my horror, that the torch that had gone flying had landed among the consumed military supplies, which consisted mostly of dry crates and sawdust packing. The flames were already licking dangerously up the wooden walls and to the wooden ceiling. The torch couldn't have landed there more than three minutes ago, but it had already grown to an entirely unquenchable and imminently deadly blaze. My relief vanished, and I felt panic crawling up my throat. I shoved it down. I needed to think if I was going to survive.

I reloaded Arielle, and got to my feet. Or, I tried to. The pain in my shoulder was immense, becoming this unbearable, whole-body ache, and it flared when I tried to stand. After a few more tries, I was on my feet. I was about to scan the doors for more cultists, but I discarded it as a waste of time. "Shitshitshit!" I swore, the panic rising again.

My prisoner was regaining consciousness, and was beginning to moan in what was probably both pain and fear. I briefly considered asking him the way out of here, but even if he were in any shape to tell me, I doubted he would. I walked over to him, found the remnants of the rope I used to tie him up, and rigged up a quick dragging harness. I then shoved a bloody handkerchief I found on one of the dead cultists into his mouth, and covered his head with a burlap bag. I then recovered my throwing knives, and ripped the sleeve off a dead man's shirt, which I fashioned into a makeshift bandage for my freely-bleeding left palm.

I looped the dragging harness around my waist, and began to walk as quickly as I could manage between my pain and the burden. I picked the door next to which the cultists had stacked the remains of their sacrifices, figuring that one to be the closest to whatever exit they were using, still holding Arielle ready. I didn't encounter any more cultists, and I was becoming more and more sure there weren't any more in the basement. Either I'd killed them all, or they'd fled.

I was rewarded in my choice of door by the sight of various items stacked in the corridor outside, evidently for removal. However, the door had not been the one the farthest from the fire, and it was already filling with smoke. Soon, it would fill with fire. I raced, or hobbled, down the corridor, dragging the unfortunate cultist in my wake. At the end, the corridor widened into a small anteroom which was filled with more items ready to be removed, and another one of those trick doors. This door, I immediately noticed, was much larger. I looked briefly for a button, but found that there was a large lever instead. I hoped this door would require less force to open, but I was immediately disappointed when I tried to depress the lever. It took nearly a full minute of straining to depress, during which time I began to feel dangerously lightheaded. Whether it was from the smoke, the pain or my injuries, I couldn't tell.

When the lever depressed, the hidden door slid open, revealing a large room. I walked through the door, warier than before. I thought it was possible there were additional cultists out here that hadn't noticed the scrum behind them. And sure enough, there were. I took off the dragging harness, and smacked my prisoner on the crown of his head with Arielle to make sure he stayed quiet.

The room I had emerged into appeared to be a large underground garage. There were several carriages and carts lined up along the back wall, and parked in an orderly fashion in the center. There was a cobbled ramp leading up to what I assumed was the street, and above us I assumed was a business. Evidently, we had left the destroyed area, though I doubted that I'd come more than a kilometer from where I entered the secret passages.

I padded across the room a few times, and spied only two men. I couldn't say for sure that they were cultists, though I assumed they were. It looked like this garage functioned as a regular place of business, in addition to a loading dock for the cult. I couldn't say for sure that the owner was even necessarily a cultist. Surely, he did business with the cult, but plenty of normal smugglers used secret warehouses not unlike the secret passages I had just come out of to avoid taxes. Certainly, the items the cultists were removing appeared quite nondescript, and a casual observer would almost certainly not have noticed their true character.

I considered what to do about the men. If they were cultists, I'd have to kill them. If they were just normal criminals, I'd probably be able to pay them off.

I stealthily approached one, keeping his friend in sight. I drew my dirk in my left hand, Arielle in my right. I sprang up and embraced the man from behind, putting the point of the dirk at his throat, and Arielle to his temple. "Quiet!" I hissed. "I need you to be quiet. Can you do that?"

"Y-yes," he said, not alerting his friend.

"Good. Are you a member of the cult?"

"Cult? What cult? Oh, fuck you're a pointy," he said, noticing my hat. "No, dammit, no!" he whined in a whisper. "I'm just one of Irena's guys."

"Bear-fucking degenerates," I spat, and the man shuddered. There are many gangs in this city, but Irena Voychenka's Kislevites are my least favorite. "Never mind that. What you need to know is this: That secret warehouse in there?" I jerked my head in the direction, "was not only a base for traitors to humanity but also on godsdamned fire. So what say me, you, your friend and my friend all get out of here alive, and you and your friend get to earn a mark apiece for your trouble?"

"You're just going to kill me," he said, pathetically.

"No, no. I have no interest in criminals today. Only cultists. Plus, I've already killed like thirteen people today, which seems like plenty. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Thirteen?" he said. He looked at me again, and saw the blood I was practically soaked in. He started shaking, "Oh, matka."

"Your mother can't save you. Do we have a deal?"

"Yes! Yes! Just don't kill me, please!" he pleaded, pathetically.

"Good. Then let your friend over there know," I said, straightening up.

My hostage called across the garage, "Hey Boris. We're going to give this paying customer and his friend a ride." His voice was a little shaky.

"Who the fuck is that?" Boris asked, his voice full of bravado. He looked for a second. "Fuck no! He's a fuckin' pointy! Fuckin' kill him!" Boris began to draw the single-shot pistol from his belt.

"I wouldn't recommend that," I said, pointing Arielle at Boris, who froze, and I could see the blood and the courage drain from his face. "I'm a paying customer, remember?"

"What about our client?" Boris asked the other Kislevite.

I answered for him, "Your clients, such as they are, are all dead. Oh, and they're cultists. Also, their warehouse is on fire and so will we be in about two minutes if we don't get the hell out of here. I gave your friend here my word I'd let you go, and I'm a man of my word. As a sign of good faith, here's a mark." I dropped the dirk into my boot and reached into my purse with my left hand, and withdrew a silver coin, which I tossed to Boris, who caught it. I passed one to the other man as well.

"Good enough for me, I suppose. Get in that cart," he said, pointing to a wagon near the ramp that was already harnessed.

Before I moved, I said, "Oh, and there's a prisoner over there by the door. Go get him and put him in the cart."

A few minutes later, we were rumbling along the cobblestones away from the burning warehouse and business. As we left, we alerted the locals to the fire, though I knew that not everyone living above it would survive. Just more for the cult to answer for.

"So," I said to the man I had taken prisoner, "what's your name?"

"Anatoly," the man said.

"Okay, Anatoly and Boris. So, while we're trundling along all pleasant-like, I'm going need to ask you some questions."

"No," Boris said. "Not part of the deal."

"We didn't discuss questions at all. How much to make you talk? Another mark?"

"What the hell?" Anatoly said, and Boris shrugged. I passed them each another mark.

"Who owns the garage?"

"Irena does," Boris said.

"What about the secret warehouse?"

"Also Irena. She rents it out to smugglers and the like when she ain't using it," Boris continued.

"How long had the current client been using the warehouse?"

"I dunno," Boris said. "Anatoly?"

"I'm not sure either, but it wasn't long. Maybe a month?"

That was puzzling. Irena was greedy and cruel, but she wasn't a moron. And only a moron would work with cultists.

"And you're sure the cult was vacating today?"

"That was the order," Anatoly said.

"Who gave the order? I know it wasn't Irena. No way she'd work with cultists."

"I don't know who actually gave the order, but I get my orders from Pawel," Anatoly said. I mentally reviewed my gang files. Pawel Marcinkowski was one of Dmitri Anushikin's soldiers. Dmitri was one of Irena's less-trusted captains. He was probably even more vicious, and fiendishly ambitious. I also hated him personally, contrasted with the professional hatred I felt for Irena. About a year ago, my chapter had tried to infiltrate Irena's organization. We failed, and Dmitri tortured the two men I'd trained to death.

"Dmitri, then." It had to be Dmitri. Worse, it looked like Dmitri was directly muscling Irena for territory, property, and clients. But if Dmitri wasn't as smart as Irena, neither was he stupid enough to do business directly with cultists. That meant he hadn't known they were cultists when he rented the warehouse to them. Sloppy. But even if he didn't know at the time he rented it, there's no way he didn't have his eye on what was going on inside. He would have found out their true loyalties pretty quickly, which would then mean either that his pay had been raised to make it worth the risk, or he had been turned by the cult. Unless, of course, he hadn't been able to get in. If Dmitri had let them stay with him blind like that, it either meant he was stupid or he was powerless to remove them. If it was the former, money was probably still the answer. If it was the latter, I doubt Dmitri would have had his guys helping with the vacation; no way he'd still be cooperating with them after they shut him out of any knowledge of what was going on inside his warehouse. The best case was that Dmitri was getting exceptionally greedy, probably as part of a scheme to take over the gang. The worst case was that the cult was infiltrating Irena's organization, and actively supporting Dmitri. That would be very bad indeed, but also an opportunity. Irena and I might have a common enemy, and the thought of getting even with Dmitri brought another savage smile to my face.

I continued, "Doesn't surprise me that it was Dmitri, though I doubt he'd would work directly for cultists either. Do you know who contracted the job?" I didn't let them in on my theories.

"I don't, but the word is Dmitri got paid a lot," Anatoly said, confirming part of my theory.

"Makes sense. Probably someone related to the cult, but not obviously. An associate. Do you know if he got paid more than once?"

"Did he fuck them for more money, you mean?" Boris asked

"Yeah."

"Probably. Dmitri does shit like that all the time. It's bad for business," Boris complained. It was an interesting tidbit, but didn't add anything to my theory.

"What about you, Anatoly? And I'm talking about an unusually large extra payment." I asked. Anatoly seemed to know more about Dmitri's dealings than Boris.

"Not that I know of," Anatoly said. That didn't necessarily surprise me either. Dmitri was capable of discretion, though not as much as Irena.

"Guess I'll have to ask Dmitri," I said

"Good fuckin' luck, pointy," Boris said.

"Oh, see, you don't know me. I can talk to whomever I want."

We passed the next few minutes in silence before Anatoly spoke up again, "Thirteen guys, really? And you kept that one alive the whole time?" he asked, indicating the moaning prisoner with a thumb.

"It may have been only eleven. I wasn't paying too much attention to the count."

"Fuck me," Boris said. "Eleven guys. What is you, some kinda Reiksguard?"

"Reiksguard are pussies. I wouldn't be caught dead next one of them, unless it was a corpse I'd made. Bunch of rich cocksuckers playing at knights. Once," I said, chuckling, "I remember some Bretonnian knights and Reiksguard came to Barak Varr, on their way...fuck knows where. Probably Araby to break some peasant skulls. They came into my tavern late at night, by which time I was utterly shitfaced. Just seeing them made me blindingly angry, for some reason. So I went over and bumped into one of the Reiksguard, intentionally, and challenged him to a duel. Again, I'm drunk, and he's stone-cold sober. He drew his sword, and I caught his first blow on my bracer. I ripped the sword from his hand and beat him bloody with the pommel. Didn't even kill the little catamite." I was laughing loudly now, but Boris and Anatoly just stared.

"Ursun's hairy cock, man. What in living fuck are you?" Boris said, repeating himself dumbly.

"That is a damned good question," I said, suddenly serious. I could see that it unnerved Boris and Anatoly, but I had no intention of putting them at their ease.

"Fuck me," he said, another repetition. He turned to Anatoly and said, "'S gettin' too fuckin' dangerous in this city, Toll, and we ain't gettin' paid enough. We should just get the fuck out and go home. I still got family in Praag."

"What about Irena? She'll come after us."

I spoke up, having come out of my reverie, "She won't. She'll be busy, I promise."

"Fuck it. Let's go," Anatoly said.

"Smart," I said.

We passed the last five minutes of the journey in silence. By the time we got to my little safehouse, it was nearer midnight than sundown, and the meager street lighting in this poor part of town was the perfect cover for what I was had to happen next.

Boris and Anatoly unloaded my prisoner, and dropped him onto the street in front my safehouse door. "Thank you kindly. Now, as a bonus for your cooperation, and to speed you on your way home, I'm going to pay you each a crown. Agreed?" I said, tossing two gold coins with my right hand. As the Kislevites reached to catch them, and at the top of the throw, I spun my wrist in a complex little gesture.

The motion activated the track inside my right sleeve, and an instant later, my hand was filled with my small, two-shot holdout pistol. Anatoly and Boris, still distracted by the coins, didn't notice, or at least not until I shot Anatoly in the head, the tiny gun making a barely audible pop! Boris only had time to croak something unintelligible before I put the second shot into his lung.

"Sorry, gentlemen. I lied," I said to Boris's dying form, blood flowing from his flapping mouth. "Can't have this little episode getting back to Dmitri, can we?"

"B-b..." Boris gurgled.

"Yes, you said you were leaving. I don't trust you."

I finished Boris with a quick thrust from my dirk, through the skull. I knelt to strip the bodies of their purses and any identifying information, including the little brass disks that all of Irena's people carried. That was the easy part. The hard part, thanks to my shoulder injury, was hauling their bodies onto the cart. By the time I was finished, I was doubled over, panting. I slapped the harnessed horse on its rump, sending it and the cart clattering away towards the inner wall. I dragged the prisoner into the safehouse, and slammed the door behind me.

Title note: The title translates (roughly) as 'to each his own,' and refers to a Roman concept of the ends of justice. To the Romans (and subsequent civilizations), justice was supposed to give each person, no matter how humble or how exalted, their 'own,' which included three broad classes: rights, property, and obligations. Each person was therefore to be made secure in the former two and not forgiven for failing to meet the latter.