Exploitable Weaknesses by Brian Keller (red queen free ebook txt) 📗

attempt, but that was a possibility he couldn’t ignore. This was a development he hadn’t anticipated. The sheer numbers of City Watchmen in the Waterfront district would make killing the Spymaster a much riskier venture. The Watch were likely to remain until Apex was no longer a problem. Perhaps simply arranging the meeting for somewhere in Batter’s Field would solve that problem. He thought, “After killing the Spymaster, perhaps even days after, crossing the Whitefoam will be about as foolish as posting copies of a full confession on the neighborhood notice boards” so meeting anywhere south of the river was not an option… unless he made arrangements for transportation across the bay. He discarded that notion almost immediately. He’d involved the Wharf City community too often already. Involving them immediately after the murder of the Spymaster? That’d be bad business.

“It’s time to move the plan forward, but I need to control where and how the meeting takes place. Aporigh needs to believe I’m just a poor, scared Waterfront kid. Willing to consider employment, but afraid of being taken to the Palace.” He needed to figure out how to set up the meeting without getting captured or revealing too much about himself. He thought, “I’ll have to be close enough for conversation, but still remain out of reach…” In the meantime, there was always work to be done in the Ruins. In truth, the rebuilding efforts should be his priority but he simply felt that someone still needed to be held accountable for the fact that the Guild was now, both figuratively and literally, in Ruins. Besides, killing Aporigh was now integrated into the overall plan. In death, the Spymaster would become a courier of sorts, precipitating further events. The irony brought a thin smile to Cooper’s lips, but it was far too soon to feel confident. The most dangerous parts were still to come.

*****

Chapter 18

The man she was seeing  now was more consistent with how she knew the Spymaster. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been excited and almost cheerful. Now, he was standing, hands on hips, berating a sergeant of the City Watch. He wasn’t quite shouting at the man, but she only knew that because she’d witnessed what his shouting sounded like.

Yoren saw her enter the room and he lowered his voice, “Very well. Return to your post. If the boy approaches you again, allow him to start the conversation. Then try and convince him to accompany you. Tell him there’s coin in it for him, tell him there’s an offer of employment, whatever you need to say to get him to come along willingly. The whole point is to bring him in, not scare him off.” He waited a moment in case the sergeant had further questions. The City Watch sergeant remained silent and Yoren waved him away, “Dismissed.”

As the soldier walked away, the Spymaster turned to Iona, “I assume you need almost no explanation. The boy approached one of the patrols and they scared him off. Apparently the boy thought they were going to try and arrest him.” Iona smiled, “To be fair, the intent is to capture him.” It appeared that Yoren was trying to decide whether she was making fun of him. He decided she was simply trying to lighten his mood, “True, but that information was not made available to the men of the Watch, though it’s likely that they have limited experience with anything other than enforcing laws and detaining criminals. They probably aren’t the best people for this task.” Iona shrugged, “You could assign it to your Secret Police…?” Yoren shook his head, “Even though this is important, to both of us, I don’t want to risk compromising them.” Iona wasn’t convinced dressing senior soldiers of the City Watch in different clothing actually constituted a “Secret Police” but that was the Spymaster’s concern, not hers.

Iona had given up asking the Spymaster to arrange an escort for her so she could walk through the city and try to sense the Gifted boy. Of course, she’d originally asked to simply go alone but his refusal to that idea was so firm and absolute that she never asked again. Instead, she then asked him who she might enlist to escort her. He flatly refused that plan as well, informing her that the detail assigned to guard her would be soldiers of his own choosing. She’d been asking daily, sometimes more frequently, for him to assemble her escort. He ignored her with equal persistence. Recently, he applied a certain amount of logic to his refusals, stating, “If the boy should recognize you, it could endanger our efforts to trap him.” She’d considered mentioning that she’d be less recognizable if she were alone but she already knew that the reason for the escort was as much to keep her from escaping his employ as it was for her protection. The thought reminded her of Felis’ earlier analogy; describing her environs as a “gilded cage”. She told herself, “It won’t always be this way.” She just didn’t know how long she’d have to wait for things to change.

“At least Yoren arranged for me to have access to the Palace library”, she thought. Of course, it wasn’t devoted to the study of Talent, as the University’s library was, but she’d found plenty of interesting material to occupy her time. She’d begun by looking for any material relating to the Mad Wizard but found precious little. Her search eventually led her to study the history of the city. She’d even found a few older books pre-dating the current regime. It was a rare occurrence to discover any evidence of whatever existed before. Unexpectedly, she learned that the Kingdom of Rhychevel had once been a colony of a larger empire. She read the book from front to back but could find no mention of the name of that empire, only that their political hierarchy was based entirely on economics.