The game goes much as expected. Each of the five takes turns upping the bid until I’m unable to continue the round, then the aggressive bidder folds and allows someone who’s behind to win and balance out everyone’s piles but mine. Unfortunately for them, coordination can do nothing the sixth of the time when I just get the best hand, and they’re unable to hide the fact with their paltry enhancements. As such, I gradually start pulling ahead.

  Naturally, that’s when the cheating starts.

  ‘Slim’ isn’t as good at slipping cards up his sleeve as he thinks he is. I would have easily spotted him even if I didn’t know what to look for. Of course, the trick relies on the dim light of the room to work, which he doesn’t know I can see in as if daylight.

  In fact, none of the others seem to have significant night vision. They’re at least more enhanced than some of the gamblers at Alan’s party, but still below what I would require them to be if I were organizing this. No doubt they’re underestimating me as ‘just a kid’ and think the coordination and cheating to be sufficient. No need to take on risky contracts against me. Fools.

  I could easily catch Slim in the act, but what would be the point? At best I’d get him kicked out of the game and his winnings distributed among everyone, only to have him be replaced by another of Greg’s hired thugs. So instead, I wait. I let them think they’re winning.

  I let the pile in front of me dwindle slowly to nothing, then stand to leave with an amiable smile. “Well, this has certainly been an entertaining evening, but I’m afraid I’m all tapped out.”

  “Oh, come now, the night has hardly begun!” Greg half shouts, causing me to stop. “I can lend you some coin to keep going. After all, what’s money between friends?”

  “…Oh, alright,” I say with a goofy grin as I sit back down, “just don’t tell Alan, okay?”

  “Our lips are sealed,” he gives a disgusting, triumphant grin, “but don’t be so nervous. Here, have some more to drink to take the edge off.”

  He goes to a wall where a pair of wine casks are propped up and pours me a cup from the one he’s been serving me all night. No doubt he has some clever explanation for why he’s been serving me from a different cask than everyone else, but asking would let him know I’m suspicious.

  I inhale the wine deeply, noting the sickly sweet floral smell present throughout the building being particularly strong in the drink. Drugged, no doubt, meant to make me more pliable and impair my memory of the evening, but not so much that I forget my debts.

  I take a mouthful, trusting moderation and my magic garments to keep me lucid. I immediately feel cold all over as the silk cloth draws the toxin through my skin and neutralizes it. I’m a bit woozy after each sip, but my enhanced healing keeps it from building up.

  A run of bad luck follows, preventing me from acting and forcing me to fold early each round, putting me further and further into debt, and widening Greg’s disgusting, greedy grin with each loss.

  Then I get what I’m waiting for – a good hand. Not the best, I’d need another knave to win outright, but a glance around the table tells me it’s better than everyone else. So, I begin aggressively raising. The exchange between Greg and Slim is smooth, just a side glance and slightest of nods, and a few seconds later a card is exchanged between sleeve and hand. It’s hard not to smile.

  Everyone else follows suit and up their bids too, just on the off chance that Slim doesn’t succeed. Finally, once the central pot holds several times what I walked in with even after subtracting my debt, I call.

  Everyone but Greg, Slim and myself immediately reveals inferior hands. I make a show of revealing my hand and cockily moving to grab the pot, positioning my hand near the centre of the table.

  “Not so fast,” Slim says, revealing his illicit hand as planned, “I think you’ll find my hand is better.” He grins as he moves to take the pot.

  I look into Greg’s grinning face, so confident that he’s won. The only warning is letting a slight grin form on my own face before I draw my wrist knife and slam it into Slim’s arm where I saw the card go, pinning him to the table.

  “Oh look,” I say with an air of complete indifference as I reach into Slim’s sleeve and withdraw a bloody and half cut in two card, “my missing knave.” A scream of rage emits from Slim as he draws his own dagger and tries to stab me. Without much thought I pull my knife back out of range, slicing his hand and wrist in two lengthwise on the way. Blood spurts everywhere as Slim falls to the ground clutching his ruined cheating hand. “Well, he’s out. I’ve called Greg, what do you have?”

  He reveals an inferior hand with a solemn expression of defeat, but I don’t miss the slight glance he makes to the thug to my left. I make to retrieve my winnings, sheathing my knife to grab it all, then duck flat against the table as a cudgel swings over me.

  I kick out, connecting with the side of the attacker’s leg and snapping it to a wrong angle with a crunch. The thug buckles, but catches themself before they hit their head on the table. Not wasting the opportunity, I reach up, grab the back of their head and slam it the rest of the way. A crunch, slump and they’re down.

  Footsteps rushing down stone steps, drawn by Slim’s scream. I draw a knife and throw it the moment the door opens. I don’t have time to cast guidance, but am competent enough to hit at this distance without it. The thug clutches their chest where the invisible knife hits, takes a few stumbling steps then falls to the ground. Another thug steps over them, only to be hit by the second invisible knife and fall a few steps past them. Then the two remaining thugs at the table recover from their confusion and attack.

  The first one swings a symbolled cudgel down at my head. I draw my toxin dagger and parry by shallowly slashing the arm and sidestepping out of the way. I take a few steps back to give the poison time to work, which the thug takes as attempted retreat and charges forward with another overhand swing, but pauses as their grip suddenly relaxes and the cudgel clangs against the stone floor. They give a perplexed look at their empty and likely numb hand and so are caught off guard when I suddenly leap forward and stab them in their shoulder. A few moments later they’re on the ground, unconscious from the toxin coated on the blade.

  The last thug at the table reasonably hesitates, causing Greg to reassess his trap and flee. However, he’s stopped by the last two thugs finally making it down the stairs and clogging up his escape just long enough for me to cast guidance on him and throw the envenomed dagger into his back. I’m careful not to kill him outright, just hitting his shoulder to let the remaining sleeping poison on the blade do its work. He slips out of sight up the stairs, but I hear him collapse a few moments later.

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  The table thug looks at their reinforcements as if they still want to flee but don't want to go by their friends blocking the exit to do so. Not giving them time to decide, I grab the fallen cudgel and charge them. They make a sloppy horizontal swing which I easily duck before collapsing them with a strike to the leg. I move past them as they fall and smash the back of their head, rendering them unconscious.

  The final two charge as one, then stumble back with a surprised scream as I cast lesser firestream on the woman’s face. I don’t want to kill them, not yet, so I only maintain the spell long enough to incapacitate, and hopefully blind. The other thug musters their courage enough to continue their charge, striking me in the head but bouncing off my shield. I land a flurry of blows before they can recover, striking knee, stomach then head and removing them from the fight.

  Rushing air as the muscle woman swings half blind at my head. Her face is covered in burns but she’s undeterred in her attempts to strike me. Her swings may be half blind, but the form is skilled, leaving no obvious openings. This might have been dangerous had I not wounded her first. We parry and dodge an exchange of blows before I finally manage to take advantage of her injury and strike her wrist as she swings down, sending her cudgel flying. A look of resignation flashes over her face as I knock her unconscious.

  Foeless, I pause to assess the room, then panic. I can’t afford any bodies yet. The watch is constantly divining for unregistered corpses, and I’m not ready yet.

  With this in mind, I pull out Lindrid’s smoke catcher and stoop over the two with thrown knives in their chests. They’re still conscious, and one of them tries to get up until I knock them back down with the woman’s magic cudgel. I open the catcher and shove it in their mouth, releasing a plume of nightswirl smoke accumulated daily over the past two months into their lungs. They struggle at first, then quickly relax into stupor. Satisfied they won’t try to kill me, I pull out my knife from their chest and cast my healing spell to keep them alive.

  I repeat the process on the others in order of most to least likely to imminently die. Fortunately, none do, giving me time for the next step.

  This place is clearly full of illicit goods, from the memory drugs to just things reserved for specific guilds that Greg do not belong to. I could go to the watch and get everyone arrested for conspiracy to abduct and defraud a noble, using the contraband as evidence for general illegal activity. But that won’t get me what I want, for that I need blackmail.

  I go to Greg with the silver rod and tap his hands with it after a quick chant. The rod flashes hot when pointed up, leading me to his office and then a lock box. Unfortunately, I’ve never learned to pick locks, but the key is easily found with a second divination that leads me back to Greg’s belt.

  Inside the box is a bundle of papers and a sack of coins. Going through them doesn’t reveal anything interesting, just a clump of gold coins, a ledger and a few correspondences. Maybe something in here will be useful, but I don’t have time to comb through, though I needed to find it to exclude it from further divinations. The sack of coins I leave – I’m not here to rob him, at least not outright.

  My next divination leads me to a cabinet with more papers. I exclude all of them, but then the divination points me back to it. Curious, upon further examination there are drag marks in the dust. It moves easily enough, seemingly on hidden wheels. Behind it is a small wall cavity with another locked box. Fortunately, I’ve already retrieved the key and quickly open it to reveal a single second ledger.

  I smile as I go through it, every page brimming with obvious evidence. Permanent unforgeable evidence, as it was written in Greg’s own hand and so will always have a divination link between them.

  Having found what I need, I move on to what I want.

  I go through the thugs’ belongings, taking coins and other metals, and leaving everything else before dragging them all to a corner of the stone basement away from any wooden supports or other flammable objects.

  …I don’t need to kill them, but it’s been so long. Besides, I need to test this method of disposal.

  I apply the blood runes all at once, then give each of them another breath of nightswirl, emptying the catcher on the last one whose tunic I cut off to apply additional runes on their torso.

  I pause to consider what I need to know. Finally, I decide on the two who know my secret from my last anthropomancy, and if anyone from the exam is suspicious of my identity.

  They don’t even stir when I slice into their gut and retrieve their information. The exam first, chanting everyone’s name I can think of in turn: Panihal, Preston, Bart, Erika and so on. A slight lump of suspicion from Bart, but just vague misgivings. It doesn’t seem like he has immediate plans to look into it. No one else suspects a thing.

  Now for those who know my secret. Alan has obviously joined the ranks which I ignore to focus on the two unknowns. It takes a slightly indirect approach since I don’t know their names, but eventually I find out that the mage and squire from Tanyth’s cell are still alive and are the ones who know. They obviously don’t know my location, just my affiliation, and I guess former cultist status.

  The entrails’ owner starts spasming, so I quickly offer them in a rush of ecstasy… It’s been too long. My body relaxes at the long overdue sensation, and I almost let myself sink into it and forget my need for haste. However, the promise of more draws me back to my present purpose, and I offer the rest of the thugs one by one. Once done, I step back, open the smoke catcher and cast firestream on the lot of them.

  I don’t know how often the body divination is performed, but from what I’ve heard it doesn’t seem to be every minute. With Anar’s power flowing through me the flesh is reduced to ash in about ten. I maintain the flames another five minutes before finally stopping to reveal a pile of blackened bone fragments.

  The room is suffocating, and the stones are glowing red, but the cooling function of my undergarment keeps me conscious. Now that I’ve actually done it, I see the flaws of this method. The bone fragments are still too large and respond faintly to my test divinations, but I can’t retrieve them from the near molten stone. Likewise, while the smoke catcher did prevent a collum of smoke from seeping upstairs and alerting everyone in the capital to what I was doing, there is still a smell.

  Well, the latter should disappear with the new cleaning spell, which I immediately cast on the ashes. It’s unable to deal with the larger bone fragments, but it quickly ‘sweeps’ the entire area of ash and other reduced remains.

  It’s unable to just erase the matter but collects and condenses it to a series of small inert and odourless balls which do not respond to any divinations that its previous form would. The balls are hard and don’t smudge with pressure, allowing them to be placed in pockets without worry of smearing evidence all over yourself.

  Now to the bone fragments on the glowing stone. My boots will withstand some heat but not standing on molten rock. Fortunately, there are a series of barrels full of collected rainwater outside which I easily carry down with the strength of sacrifice and dowse the growing rock to produce a cloud of steam.

  The stone is still deadly hot, but cool enough to walk on with my magic boots. I soak a mop I find in a corner and use it to sweep all the fragments to a cooler surface where I smash them to powder with a hammer until the cleaning spell affects them.

  Then I take the remaining water and dowse the stone closest to the wooden supports, just to make sure nothing happens after I’m gone. Finally, I cast the cleaning spell on every surface of the place until I can no longer smell burnt flesh, and there’s not even a hint of reaction on the silver rod.

  Exhausted from my efforts I collapse next to Greg’s unconscious body. About half an hour later he begins to stir from his drug-induced stupor. He wakes to see me staring down at him with a broad smile.

  “Oh, good, you’re awake. I was getting a little worried.”